Newsmakers, September 15, 2016

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• Solomon's Song

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  “An old soul,” that’s the way Carol Elhindi describes her 14-year-old son Solomon. The type of boy who would befriend anyone including the child on the playground who’s all alone, with an empathetic streak that most teenagers don’t have.

  Solomon Elhindi passed away from suicide in January of 2016. He began experiencing problems with his mental health about a year before, becoming more withdrawn and struggling in school for the first time. His mother said he rejected taking prescription drugs because he didn’t want to take a pill to become normal.

  Solomon Elhindi’s story is and isn’t unique. One of the reasons the Elhindi family of Winona has started Solomon’s Song, a foundation dedicated to promote mental health awareness and suicide prevention, a way to channel the negative of Solomon’s death into something positive for others.

  While each story of someone dealing with a mental health problem is different, suicide happens way too often and is preventable.

  According to the American Foundation For Suicide Prevention, suicide is the leading cause of death for children ages 10-14 and the second leading cause of death for ages 15-34 in both Minnesota and Wisconsin.

  Carol Elhindi said one of the big goals of Solomon’s Song is to make it alright to talk about mental health issues in an open way.

  “We don’t know what to do. We don’t know where to go with these kinds of things. We don’t know who to ask,” she said. “The stigma makes you feel like ‘do I share this with people, so they can help me out?, or if I share this with people, will it be looked at as a negative thing?’”

  Elhindi said ultimately the family would like to use the foundation to help build a youth center in Winona.

  Solomon’s Song has been very active in it’s first few months, hosting a fun-run in Winona is August with plans to sponsor a health fair and concert in October.

• La Crosse Area Behavioral Health Grant

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  Ten communities across Wisconsin will share nearly $20 million in grant money to take the next eight years to make some meaningful changes to behavioral health.

  The Healthier Wisconsin Partnership Program at the Medical College of Wisconsin awarded the “Changemaker” grants earlier this summer.

  This grant program is different in that it will allow communities to do some planning, hire staff to assess the range of mental health services that are available and make changes over a long period of time. The end goal is to improve behavioral health in each of the communities that was awarded a grant.

  The La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium is one of the groups that received a grant ($1.5 million) and will focus on improving the way behavioral health is delivered in La Crosse County.

  “We’re looking for ways that we can do something different from what’s been done before,” said Consortium Director Catherine Kolkmeier. “There’s a lot of services that are offered by a lot of different agencies in the community. What can we do to help bring this together in the bigger picture?”

  The first year is spent planning for what will happen in the next five years, which will involved implementing changes to mental health services. The changes will not only be specific to the communities, but they will also share with each other what is and isn’t working.

  Heather Quackenboss was recently hired to coordinate the grant work of the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium. She’s planning to spend the next year interviewing those from agencies who provide behavioral health service and people who use those services to get a broad picture.

  “We’re really trying to determine, who needs what, what’s out there and available for people, what do we still need, what’s working that could maybe expand, and bringing all that together,” Quackenboss said.

  Kolkmeier said they enter the planning process with no pre-conceived notions about what the final outcome might look like. But there has been talk of coming up with a common behavioral health language that all parties can use. There is also the idea to do a better job when someone with a mental health challenge is making a life transition such as between high school and college, or when they change jobs.