Matthew Zanger has lived with depression his entire life. His mother had it, most of his 12 siblings have it. He has it. His three children have it. When his college-student son was in crisis, his community hospital had no beds available.

Cynthia Steidl Bishop runs a community mental health organization with a wide range of services in central Iowa. But without a planned move to affiliate with one of the area hospital networks, she says her organization would probably have to shut down.

Elley Gould serves as a vital link between law enforcement and social services in southeast Iowa, training officers as crisis intervention specialists and finding help for prisoners with mental illness and drug addiction. The program is successful and expanding. But her area still lacks hospital beds for patients in crisis and money for substance-abuse evaluations.

These are just a few of the stories I’ve been hearing from people all over the state since I wrote about my friends’ struggle to find help for their 18-year-old son. Sergei Neubauer lost his battle against depression and post-traumatic stress just a month ago. His story, first told in a heart-wrenching obituary written by his mother, went viral on the Internet. It has brought wider attention to concerns and issues that people like Matthew, Cynthia and Elley live with every day.

More:A grieving mom writes her teen son's touching obituary and pleads for Iowa to do more for the mentally ill

One of the wonderful people who has stepped forward to help is Sue Huppert of Des Moines University. She heard my call for a candidate forum on mental health and offered the campus as a venue. Plans are moving forward for the event, and the Register will announce details soon.

In the weeks since we said goodbye to Sergei, I’ve heard from a gratifying — and disturbing — number of people who were moved by his story to share their own experiences with mental illness in Iowa. Gratifying, because people care and want to help. Disturbing, because some of the stories are so similar to Sergei’s.

Here's why Gov. Kim Reynolds and I cried at her news conference today

Zanger, of Dubuque, talked about what it was like to respond to his 19-year-old son’s call from college in St. Paul, Minnesota, that he needed to come home because he might hurt himself. He found a young man who had been struggling for months while hiding the truth from his parents. He was virtually homeless, had stopped attending classes and had lost as much as 30 pounds.

When they brought him back to Dubuque, they took him to a hospital emergency room. The hospital said it had no beds and tried to refer the family to a hospital in Sioux City, more than five hours away. “That was just not something that we were going to consider,” Zanger said. “We needed to be near him and with him and visiting him.”

The Zangers took their son home that night. “I was just awake all night, I was just afraid he was going to hurt himself,” Zanger said.

Luckily, a bed opened up in Dubuque’s other hospital the next day. While his son was in the hospital, Zanger took a call on the crisis help line for the local Mental Health America chapter, where he volunteers. He found himself talking to another father from a nearby town who feared his adult son was suicidal and had tried all available resources without success.

“I hung up the phone feeling useless, discouraged and desperately afraid for my own son’s future,” Zanger said.

Zanger’s son eventually was able to access an intensive outpatient program in the community and is much better, he said. The young man, who had been studying music composition, is now scheduled to perform at a suicide prevention program that Mental Health America is sponsoring Oct. 27 in Dubuque. Details: http://www.mhadbq.org/events.html

The group has invited people to anonymously share their own stories of struggles with mental health. The “Share Your Stories, Show Your Support” initiative received about 200 stories, Zanger said, which is “about 192 more than we had at our dinner last year.” Some of those stories are on the agency’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mhadbq/

I’ve also heard from some truly caring and dedicated people who provide mental-health services. They are seeing progress in some areas, but they also have some frustrations.

Gould is a community transition coordinator for Transition Link, a program that serves eight counties in Iowa’s southeast corner. She works through the jails to help stabilize prisoners with behavioral health disorders or addictions. She finds services they will need upon release to avoid running afoul of the law again. She also trains members of law enforcement to handle calls involving behavioral health crises.

The program has expanded and plans are to shift some focus to keeping people with behavioral disorders out of jail rather than just helping offenders avoid more trouble. Engagement from law enforcement leaders and personnel has been “phenomenal,” she said. She also praised the governing board of the mental health region for its responsive support.

But there are still significant gaps in the resources available, especially for people in crisis, Gould said.

“I work very closely with the sheriff’s offices, jails, and police departments in our region, and hear on a very regular basis how frustrated they are — as though they are backed into a corner with nowhere to turn,” she said.

The lack of hospital beds for psychiatric patients is a common complaint, she said.

“All too frequently, I hear of individuals being transported to hospitals for crisis assessments for psychiatric hospitalization, only to be told there are no beds available, or simply that no hospitals will take them,” Gould said. “For such a long time, society was led to believe that law enforcement was the problem in these situations, but I can tell you firsthand, law enforcement is crying out for help.”

Better funding of community-based services could ease the problem of lack of hospital beds, said Bishop, executive director of Eyerly Ball Mental Health Services.

“Hands down, it’s a problem,” she said. “However, what we believe as community-based providers is if you could fund community-based services well, we can prevent people from having to go to the hospital. Or when they get out, we can prevent them from going back.”

When I stopped by Eyerly Ball last week, its directors were just winding up a meeting about the organization’s finances.

The Polk County-based agency served about 4,500 people in central Iowa last year. Many of its services are designed to prevent people with mental illnesses from needing costly hospitalization. But Medicaid reimbursement rates and changing interpretation of rules are putting a strain on many community mental health organizations, and Eyerly Ball is no exception.

“We are mostly funded by Medicaid and as a safety net organization, we are looking to our future. Therefore we are affiliating with the hospital-based system,” Bishop said. “Because for us to be a stand-alone, small, community-based organization, our future doesn’t look so bright to be independent.”

She said the organization is “thrilled” that it is affiliating with UnityPoint because it’s a “wonderful organization,” but it’s also a matter of survival.

“We live so close to the margin all the time because of funding,” she said. “Because it’s our mission to work with folks who are the underserved population and that’s what we want to continue to do, but we can’t do that based on what we’re getting reimbursed through Medicaid.”

Those are just a tiny fraction of the stories I’ve been hearing from Iowans. I’d like to hear from more of you. Also, stay tuned for more details about Iowa’s gubernatorial candidate forum on mental health.

Kathie Obradovich is the Register's political columnist. Contact: kobradov@registermedia.com Twitter: @kobradovich