Bob Tryanski

As Bob Tryanski prepares to become Douglas County’s first director of behavioral health projects, he’s confident he will soon have an impact on improving the community’s mental health services.

“There will be stories to tell before the end of the summer,” Tryanski said last week.

The county will have an accomplished storyteller to tell them. Storytelling at seminars and conferences has been a part of his professional life for 28 years. Investigating and planning for new mental health services, though, has not been. Tryanski, who is expected to begin his new $8,750 per month contract with the county on Friday, has not been a mental health professional or administrator. He was a mental health care consumer in the past, an experience he chose not to elaborate on for this story, and is a longtime advocate on mental health issues.

Bob Tryanski

Instead, Tryanski’s skill set focuses on communication and project management. That includes a project to open a day care, library and eye-care clinic in South Africa, he said, as well as time spent working with Gloria Steinem at the “Today” show and USA Today, and as a producer of corporate training programs for such clients as NBC, Universal Studios, Merck, and Johnson and Johnson.

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In his new job, Tryanski will be overseeing a project that already has had a changing story to it. About 18 months ago, the focus of the county was getting a proposed crisis intervention center built. The county even contracted with Treanor Architects to design a concept plan for the facility.

The center was thought to be a key piece of a larger proposal to improve the Douglas County Jail. The $30 million plan would involve an expansion of the jail’s capacity plus the crisis intervention center, which should keep some people experiencing a mental health crisis from landing in jail.

The county is still committed to improving both the jail and the mental health system, but there’s some thought the county may have gotten ahead of itself with the crisis center plans.

“The task is not about getting the crisis center done; it’s about getting it right,” Tryanski said. “That’s what voters expect, and that’s what we should be striving to do.”

The county is now interested in studying an effort underway at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. LMH has proposed creating a smaller scale mental health crisis stabilization center at the hospital.

The LMH center is not yet open, but might be in operation by January.

“When that comes online, we’ll have 24/7 crisis service in this community,” Tryanski said. “That’s a big first step. What’s the next step? Can we pilot some of these intensive case management tools and find out which are effective in keeping people out of the hospital or coming back to the ER or getting arrested? That’s a good next step.”

Construction of a county-funded crisis intervention center is still expected, Tryanski said. But much work still needs to be done before the county is ready to ask voters to finance the center, both Tryanski and Assistant County Administrator Sarah Plinsky said.

Although the county understands the sense of urgency in the community and among stakeholders, there is no deadline for when such a proposal would be ready, they said.

No proposal would be ready for voter consideration until the county establishes the appropriate size of the crisis center, has engaged all the needed partnering agencies, and has in place the wrap-around services to make the center successful, Tryanski and Plinsky said.

Data from LMH’s stabilization center will greatly aid in getting those answers, particularly figuring out the proper size of the center, Tryanski said.

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The words heard again and again when county leaders talk about their new behavioral health efforts are collaboration and communication. They insist they are the keys for the proposed mental health crisis intervention center being a success, not as a stand-alone treatment center but part of a continuum of care offered to those with mental health or substance abuse issues. The focus of the county and its partners of Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, Lawrence Memorial Hospital, DCCCA, Heartland Community Health Center and others is in building that network of support.

Tryanski’s role will be to research and help create those systems. He’s not expected to be an administrator for the crisis intervention center, for example.

Tryanski already can envision some of the efforts. He said an intensive case management program that helps people with behavioral health issues avoid the emergency room or jail will be critical.

“It’s not one social worker working to connect a client or consumer with other services, but a team who walks with people as they move from a place of illness and crisis as the norm to wellness as a practice,” he said. “It’s a team that says, ‘How can we get this person connected with housing and employed and continue to be not only sober but in recovery?’ All those things require a coordinated, integrated approach.

“If we want to get better outcomes in terms of managing crisis and preventing crisis, we need to collaborate. Collaboration means sharing resources. Collaboration means having honest and frank discussion about who is in the best position to provide a service.”

County leaders believe they have found the right person to spur that type of collaboration.

Tryanski said he would bring to the post skills in communication and project management he learned and honed in the late 1980s as a student at Syracuse University, where he majored in electronic media and political science, and as a lecturer at Syracuse and Mississippi State University, in addition to his later work at various media outlets and in corporate training.

For 28 years, Tryanski has written and produced monologues that present strategies for navigating the teen years, which he has presented for such clients as National Endowment for the Humanities, the United Way of America, National Association of High School Principals and National Association of Student Councils.

About eight years ago as he settled in Lawrence, he branched out to “entrepreneurial projects” involving social action. In 2008, he created a nonprofit Keep-It!, which sought to increase civic engagement in schools throughout North America, Tryanski said. Through his coordination of the efforts of 60 schools in seven states, the nonprofit built a day care center, library and eye-care clinic in Ivory Park, South Africa, he said.

Even before that project wrapped up in 2014, he started working with the Alliance of Student Activities as first its communications director and then executive director during a campaign to communicate research results of the positive outcomes of teen arts and sports activities on academic achievement and social well-being, he said. During his three years with the organization, he was involved in fundraising and budgeting and the restructuring of the organization’s bylaws and governance, Tryanski said.

“What I tried to emphasize in my candidacy was the idea that I’m a strong project manager, and I have good communication skills,” he said.