A group of community leaders moved forward this morning with plans to form a task force to study mental health issues in Douglas County.
The Community Health Improvement Project — a coalition of 15 different organizations — agreed during this morning’s board meeting to add mental health to the list of issues the group is already studying.
More than 40 community members packed the meeting, including Kathy Mitchell, the mother of a Lawrence woman who committed suicide after being turned away from Lawrence Memorial Hosptial last month.
“My daughter is gone, and yes, there was a gap in the system that day and it wasn’t a lack of us looking for help,” Mitchell told the CHIP board. “In the end the system failed her and she’s dead today.”

Concerned residents want to see a 24-hour in-patient unit re-open to help those suffering from mental illnesses.

For more on this story, see the 6News reports at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Sunflower Broadband’s channel 6 and pick up a copy of Thursday’s Journal-World.