‘An Evening With Friends’ highlights mental health

More than $8,000 raised to support local mental health care

The North Big Horn Hospital Foundation’s annual fundraiser, An Evening With Friends, drew well over 100 people to the community center Saturday night, including U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, for an evening focused on community support, recognition and a growing commitment to mental health care in the Big Horn Basin.

The event honored the foundation board and donors whose contributions help fund expanded services at North Big Horn Hospital. Proceeds from the evening this year directly support mental health care, helping ensure patients and families in the region can access services close to home.

“In a rural area where resources are often limited, those efforts are critical,” hospital administrator Eric Connell explained. “The hospital’s growth is intentional.

“If I would sum up who we are and where we are going, it’s this, growth with a purpose. Any time I want care, I want the option to get it in Lovell and not have to drive to Billings.”

Connell credited the hospital’s expanding medical staff and vision for improving care locally, while also welcoming Barrasso with humor, joking that the senator would be granted “temporary privileges” as a member of the medical staff for the evening.

Senator John Barasso

Barrasso, a physician by training, praised both the hospital and the community.

“This is a great hospital … listed as one of the top 20 in the country in the category of quality,” he said. “What else would you want to be measured on?”

He tied that success directly to the people of the area.

“This is a community that continues to want to get better and better and better,” Barrasso said. “What’s going on tonight in this community every single day continues to inspire this great country.”

Ali Wagner

The keynote speaker, Family Nurse Practitioner Ali Wagner, focused her remarks on the growing need for mental health services and the importance of connection in a small community.

“We just don’t have the excuse in a small town to not check on each other,” Wagner said. “We should be asking people, ‘Are you okay?’”

Drawing from both her professional and personal experiences, Wagner spoke candidly about the challenges many face but do not openly share.

“People that live with depression … they look like any of us,” she said. “They go to work every day, they take care of their kids, but inside, they may be burning.”

She emphasized that too often individuals struggle in silence.

“We ask people, ‘How are you?’ and they say, ‘I’m fine,’ and they just keep pushing -- until they can’t,” Wagner said. “You can only keep it to yourself so long until it starts to bubble up and bubble over.”

Wagner said one of her primary goals is to shift mental health care away from crisis response and toward earlier intervention.

“We shouldn’t have to wait until a crisis to start treating these issues,” she said. “We should be able to start at the beginning.”

That approach includes expanding access to care within the community and strengthening coordination among providers.

“It’s about a team,” Wagner said, noting that patients often struggle to navigate multiple providers on their own. “Why would we have the patient do those things when they’re in this poor state of mind?”

She also stressed the importance of building trust and relationships in care.

“Patients shouldn’t feel like they’re a number,” Wagner said. “We should be partners in care.”

Her long-term vision is to reduce reliance on emergency services for mental health needs by making care more accessible and responsive.

“My goal is to keep as many psychiatric mental health issues and patients out of the ER as possible,” she said.

Throughout the evening, speakers returned to a common theme: that strong communities are built through connection, support and shared responsibility.

As Wagner put it, “We can definitely help each other out and make a difference in the lives of so many people.”

The evening’s entertainment was provided by Andy Nelson, a cowboy poet and humorist from Pinedale, who entertained the crowd with a mix of traditional poetry and storytelling centered on Western life and his experience growing up in a family of farriers.

With continued support from donors and the broader community, organizers said the foundation hopes to expand those efforts and ensure that high-quality mental health care remains available close to home for years to come.