Finding her network for good

Matthew Pingree loved space. His mom, Katie Lyon-Pingree, thought he might become an astronaut. One preschool teacher predicted he would have a career in national intelligence. Matthew was sometimes talkative, other times reflective. As a teenager, he loved competitive wrestling. He discovered chess, and coached younger kids who wanted to learn. He got so that he could play a game of chess with his mom online, without even looking at the screen — and still win.

“The kid was crazy intelligent,” Katie said.

Matthew also suffered from depression, and his family lost him to that illness in 2021. He was just 18 years old.

When Matthew was struggling, Katie said, their family found the mental-health system extremely difficult to navigate — even though they had ample resources. Matthew spent days in a locked emergency-room ward, had extensive testing, was prescribed numerous medications, and experienced a labyrinthine series of referrals, clinical specialists, hospitals and residential programs over a period of years.

“We tried everything that we knew how to do at the time,” Katie said.

Now, Katie is devoting resources, intellect and energy to helping other families who are navigating mental health challenges. She and her family created a donor-advised fund at the Foundation in 2023.

Working with the Foundation, she said, helped her learn about community need and opened new opportunities for action and connection.

Katie’s Foundation philanthropy advisor, William Abbott, introduced her to Traci Fowler. Traci has worked in the behavioral-health field for decades, leads the Foundation’s work in behavioral health and substance use disorders and is a member of the New Hampshire Children’s System of Care Advisory Council. Traci told Katie about the needs of the state’s community mental health centers, which serve families with low incomes — and invited professionals from those centers to the table. Katie shared her family’s story and learned about the centers’ work.

“They serve a lot of people who don’t have any resources and for whom that is the only option,” Katie said. Her family made a significant contribution for operating support for the centers from their donor-advised fund. Other Foundation donors combined to match that contribution.

Traci suggested that Katie connect with the nonprofit advocacy group New Futures to learn about its work training people to push for policy change to improve behavioral health-care systems. Katie met New Futures staff and trained as a citizen advocate, learning about the legislative process and becoming part of a network of people working for change. Just a few months later, she sat before the microphone with a framed photo of Matthew in front of her, imploring the New Hampshire Senate Health and Human Services Committee to recommend full funding for the state’s 988 crisis line — a service which did not exist during Matthew’s lifetime.

Katie credits her partnership with Foundation staff with giving her the support and guidance she needed to act. “I feel able to do this work because William and Traci came into my life,” she said.

And Katie is determined that even the most painful of her family’s experiences inform improvements for others. Some of the most difficult days of Matthew’s illness were when he was in a secure psychiatric hospital emergency unit. Recognizing that families need support, NAMI NH started a peer-support network for families whose children are being boarded in emergency departments. Katie and her family were major donors to the effort to get that peer-support network launched. And she hopes to train to be a peer volunteer to help other families.

“It is bittersweet, because it is yet another example of a program that I wish we had that we didn’t,” Katie said. “But let’s create as much support for people in that horrific experience as possible.”

Too many families in New Hampshire share a common experience of loss and heartbreak. As Katie has said, her work is now all done “in the hopes of saving other New Hampshire families the gut-wrenching devastation that comes with losing a loved one to issues of mental health.”

The Charitable Foundation is committed to helping families achieve their philanthropic goals. For more information on how the Foundation can help, contact Melinda Mosier, vice president of donor engagement and philanthropy services, at 800-464-6641 ext. 266 or zryvaqn.zbfvre@aups.bet.