By Sam Elliott

Members of the Fishers Mental Health Task Force gathered at city hall last month for their first quarterly progress meeting, led by Mayor Scott Fadness and Fire Chief Steve Orusa.

“The point of these meetings really is to just touch base and make sure we’re holding each other accountable,” Fadness said. “I’m really excited about the progress we’re making. I think we are doing something substantive here.”

The task force’s goals include public awareness and anti-stigma campaigns plus some level of training in dealing with mental health issues for the city’s teachers, coaches, police officers and firefighters and including as many mental healthcare providers as possible.

“When we started this initiative, we had limited knowledge of even who the help providers were in the field of mental health. I think we’ve made a lot of progress with that and understanding the different stakeholders and building new relationships,” Fadness said. “Our strategy right now is we’re telling our story of what we want to accomplish and we’re telling the mental health community, ‘You tell us where you think you plug into that.’ They’re the professionals in the field, so we’re really looking to them.

“I think people are aware we are trying to do something collective in the area,” he added. “I see the intelligence reports from the police department. There are still people out there really suffering, so we need to help them as much as humanly possible.”