A Very Personal Fight on Mental Health

Early in his career as a mental-health advocate, Matt Kuntz talked readily about how his stepbrother committed suicide after fighting in Iraq with the Montana National Guard. But Mr. Kuntz never opened up about his own depression, or the day he almost killed himself.

He says it was his stepbrother’s death that led him in 2008 to take the job leading the Montana chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. He had some big early successes, among them, persuading the state to pass legislation that required face-to-face mental-health screenings for members of the National Guard before and after deployments. He also played a critical role in convincing Congress to require the screenings for all service members.

Over the years, Mr. Kuntz has worked with lawmakers and researchers to establish the Center for Mental Health Research and Recovery at Montana State University and to start a planned psychiatric residency program at the Billings Clinic.

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His organization did all that despite being tiny, with just three employees. It’s not unusual for Mr. Kuntz to work directly with someone in the throes of a mental-health crisis, or a parent desperate to find treatment for a child. “It’s always hard to serve the hot calls that are coming in,” he says. “But the best policy making is usually done by people who are still fielding those calls.”

Mr. Kuntz says he was “deep into this fight” before he had the courage to share his own story. His organization encourages people with mental illness to talk about their experiences as a way to empower themselves and fight stigma. A relative took Mr. Kuntz to task for his silence.

It wasn’t easy, but he started talking publicly about how he nearly took his own life in 2000. A year after he graduated from West Point, an injury at Army Ranger School ended his military ambitions, triggering the depression he had kept at bay since high school.

Mr. Kuntz hung a noose from the rafters in his attic, only to remember he hadn’t paid his rent. Not wanting to shortchange his landlord, he wrote a check and left home to drop it in a mailbox. Returning, he saw a neighbor sitting on the porch, crying. The man’s marriage was in trouble, his job in jeopardy. The two talked for hours.

“I was able to help him,” Mr. Kuntz says. And in helping someone else, he was able to help himself. “I went home, and I said, ‘Not today.’ "