2022-07-30 Kim Hammer Show: Legislature's Caucus Focused on Mental/Behavioral Health

We're talking mental /behavioral health, a major issue in this and every state, with State Representative Fran Cavenaugh (District 60, northeast Arkansas) and State Representative DeAnn Vaught (District 4, southwest Arkansas), both part of the Legislature's Mental Health Caucus.

The Caucus is bringing together the "puzzle pieces" of different agencies to determine how to better work together to serve Arkansans in need. Bringing those various state agencies together has exposed numerous similar services the state provides and how those services overlap; lawmakers are "looking for quality not quantity of services."

Rep. Cavenaugh, head of the Mental Health Caucus, has a passion for mental health issues because in her work with children she's "seeing more and more that it's an ongoing issue." Financial matters are extremely important, she says, because "the more effectively we [the state] use the money, the more clients we can serve," she says.

Rep. Vaught, a self-proclaimed sexual abuse survivor, has focused on mental health issues and pursued legislation for several years and tells about receiving messages from abuse victims who contemplated suicide as the driver for her work in this area.