When I moved to Massachusetts, I knew that the infrastructure around mental health, the peer community, all that, would be very different from what I'd had before. The Regional Mental Health Boards (RMHBs) and Regional Action Councils (RACs) in CT spoiled me forever on this idea of "connective tissue" across the state. The RMHBs and RACs were created as a way to make sure people living and working in the state had a say in Review and Evaluation (R&E) of programs funded through the state's Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS); but by the time I got involved, they were already doing so much more. Since they didn't compete with service provider agencies for clients or funding, and had a Board of Directors made up of local community members, they'd been able to build lasting relationships with different state-funded and private-sector groups and the people who used those services. Over forty years of staffing changes, and fallout from budget cuts, and changes at the state house, the RMHBs and RACs built and maintained that connective tissue between residents and the organizations that served them. Mental health and addiction service provider agencies, advocacy groups, peer-run organizations, even housing authorities and libraries - if it was a resource that helped people live in their communities of choice, somebody from that organization or at least that field was connected to the RMHBs and RACs, so information got shared.

For Mental Health Awareness Month in May, my RMHB had a calendar based on all of those relationships: trainings and workshops, film screenings, health fairs, presentations, walks, fundraisers...there was something happening almost every day, and most days more than one thing was listed - and that calendar got shared through all those local organizations to anyone that was interested. The staff for each RMHB or RAC was tiny - barely 2 full-time employees - but their whole job was getting that community buy-in from residents and agencies.