Report: “Texas Libraries Work To Bridge State’s Mental Health Services Gap”

From The Texas Tribune:

From the Texas State Library and Archives Commission in Austin offering a mental health resources page to the San Antonio Public Library’s mental health awareness presentation on the signs of anxiety to a private telehealth room where patrons can meet with a counselor via Zoom in North Texas town of Pottsboro, these librarians do their best to help their communities with mental health resources.

The National Library of Medicine’s South Central Region gave the Pottsboro Area Library a $20,000 COVID-19 outreach grant to develop programs to improve health literacy and information access related to the pandemic. In 2021, the American Library Association awarded the Hewitt Public Library a $3,000 grant to create community conversations about mental health.

[Clip]

Abena Asante, senior program officer at St. David’s Foundation, said their team developed the Libraries for Health Initiative after they hosted several community conversations in which mental health needs continuously came to the forefront of discussion.

“We chose libraries because they are open to the public and trusted by people of all demographics. We wanted to take advantage of that, put libraries in the driver’s seat, and work with them to create a health initiative,” she said.

The pilot program is designed to allow mental health programs to flow seamlessly into the library’s community service model. The peer specialist training program provided the initial training for certification using a federal grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Asante said one of the things that struck her when their library program was launched was the number of librarians who knew what mental health services were working in their community and which ones were not.

“They knew things way before the city or the county or other nonprofit organizations because the library is such a trusted entity that people will come and tell them about everything. So, when we announced this program, all these libraries were excited to have a response to something they have seen all this time but didn’t have the confidence to address it,” she said.

Read the Complete Article (about 2200 words)

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Associations and Organizations, Funding, Libraries, National Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Public Libraries