Tiffany Larson, Bee Inspired CAPP program coordinator through Building Families, fastens a friendship bracelet onto a young girl attending the Slam the Stigma event during the South Hamilton High School varsity basketball games Tuesday night in Jewell. Building Families, with offices in Clarion, serves Franklin, Hamilton, Humboldt and Wright counties. Multiple social services agencies were represented at Slam the Stigma, which was born from an event held at Clarion Goldfield Dows High School in 2022. That community was grieving the loss of a young student to suicide, and his family and local organizations banded together to hold a mental health awareness event during a high school basketball game that winter.

“Many of us attended the Clarion event with resources and we just thought it was awesome to see so many mental health organizations come together,” Regina Suhrbier, outreach coordinator at Community Health Center of Fort Dodge, said during a similar event at Iowa Central Community College in late January. CHC was one of that event’s organizers. “We wanted to see similar events happen in other communities.”

The Iowa Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness was also represented at the event in Jewell. (Daily Freeman-Journal photos by Angela Hewitt)