The Lack of Mental Health Services In Rural Areas

In Colorado, mental health care facilities are concentrated in bigger cities and harder to find for the roughly 720,000 people living in rural areas.

Lori Gill remembers the moment back in 1997 when she says she wanted to die.

"I felt that in any direction I looked, that people's lives would be better off without me," Gill said. "I had a rope, and up drives my daughter up the driveway. And it was enough for me to just kind of 'deer in the headlights' thing and go, 'Oh my gosh.'"

Until that moment, Gill had been afraid to ask for help. Her hometown of Merino, Colorado — two hours northeast of Denver — is a tiny farming hamlet with less than 300 people. She was the high school history teacher.