Matt Kuntz of Montana NAMI took up PTSD cause after death of stepbrother

Fighting for proper care - State NAMI head took up cause after losing stepbrother to PTSD, suicide
By MARTIN J. KIDSTON of the Helena Independent Record



HELENA - As a child, Matt Kuntz lost a friend to an eating disorder. When he entered Capital High School as a teen, he lost classmates to suicide.

Mental illness had always been there; it was always something he'd seen. But it wasn't an issue Kuntz stopped to consider for very long.

Then last spring, he watched helplessly as his stepbrother, Chris Dana, lost a battle with post-traumatic stress disorder and ended his life in suicide. That, Kuntz said, changed everything.

More than 17 months into his unplanned but energetic campaign to improve mental health care in Montana, Kuntz is working to change the way mental illness is perceived by the public.

“We've got an opportunity right now to help develop a system that takes better care of Montana's mentally ill,” he said recently at a downtown Helena cafe. “I think there are a lot of challenges that need to be met. But people are working hard. There's no doubt about that.”

The former Army infantry officer who became a lawyer but quit his practice to serve as executive director of the Montana chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness admits his road has been a strange one.

He adds that his new position with NAMI wasn't something he saw coming. Yet the timing was right and change was needed, and since last March, change is what he's been fighting to achieve.

Kuntz praised the system implemented by the Montana National Guard this summer in response to Dana's death. In less than two years, the Guard revamped its entire post-combat environment and adjusted the way it works with soldiers returning from deployment.

That effort began in March 2007, when Dana shot himself after returning home with the Montana National Guard from Iraq.

In the day's following his death, Kuntz began pushing for change within the service. He met with the press, wrote several op-ed pieces for newspapers, called the governor's office and stayed abreast of the progress.

“The night before I wrote my first letter, I felt really sad and defeated,” Kuntz said. “I didn't want Chris to die in vain, and I didn't want to read about other people in the paper. I just hoped the people would respond.”

During a Memorial Day celebration at Fort Harrison last summer, a service member approached Kuntz and told him not to worry - told him the problems would be fixed. It was then, he knew, that things would finally begin to change.
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