Program prepares Montana State students to provide mental health counseling in rural areas

In 2013, Kelcy Jensen-Coon's cousin, who was 20, died by suicide, Jensen-Coon said. Both had grown up in Wisdom, a small community in southwest Montana. Jensen-Coon, who was then 19, saw how the death impacted her family and community, and she wishes there had been mental health services readily available close by for the family and community to utilize.

Jensen-Coon, who is now a graduate student in the counseling program in Montana State University's Department of Health and Human Development, would like to make clinical mental health counseling services more accessible to small communities a...