In rural Central Texas, libraries are stepping up to offer mental health support

From KUT News:

It’s just a regular Wednesday at the Smithville Public Library, and that means there’s a lot going on. Past the regular patrons in the main reading room, a back room bustles with activity: around a dozen women — some fairly young, some well into their golden years — are gathered on folding chairs, stretching their arms and legs into careful poses.

Smithville resident Cheryl McNeil says it was a game changer when the library started offering these free “chair yoga” classes. Without them, she might have to drive out to Bastrop to take a class like this.

“I just needed to get moving and stretching. I hadn’t been doing all that,” she said.

A second group of women sits behind the yogis, knitting hats for local veterans who are going through chemo. They call themselves “The Knitwits,” and they’ve been meeting for decades — but Library Director Judy Bergeron said she purposely co-scheduled the chair yoga class with the knitting circle earlier this year.

“A few of them have come to join us from knitting, but others have been a little more shy,” she said. “But we have noticed that when we’re doing the leg stretches and stuff like that with the chair yoga, their legs are moving under the table.”

Smithville is one of eight Central Texas libraries receiving funding from the St. David’s Foundation as part of the Libraries for Health initiative, a pilot project aimed at boosting mental health support in rural communities. Since 2021, it has allowed libraries like Smithville’s to incorporate programming like yoga and grief groups, and has provided funding for peer support specialists to provide one-on-one mental health support to library patrons.

Meeting people where they are

Abena Asante, a senior program officer at the St. David’s Foundation, says the idea came after a community health needs assessment showed there was insufficient mental health support across the five Central Texas counties the organization covers.

“Looking at the behavioral health workforce, we know that there’s a shortage of mental health providers, not only here in urban communities, but also more so in rural [communities],” Asante said. “In rural [communities], the gap is compounded with transportation issues and so many other barriers.”

Asante said her team wanted to identify existing assets in rural communities that could serve as access points for mental health support. Libraries came up “again and again,” she said. Most communities already have libraries and rely on them — not just for books, but for all kinds of resources.

That’s certainly true in Smithville, a small town located about 35 miles Southeast of Austin. Bergeron says for some people, the library is the only place they have access to computers and the internet.

“It’s not just coming in to use the computer, but it’s coming in because I have to fill out a critical social security benefits form, and I don’t know how to do it, and how can I get help?” Bergeron said.

Other people who walk through the door might be veterans unsure how to access their benefits, people looking for help recovering from addiction or unhoused people looking for a space to warm up or cool off.

But library staff just aren’t always equipped with the time or training to help. That’s where Libraries for Health comes in; starting in 2021, the St. David’s Foundation gave grants to libraries in Smithville, Taylor, Elgin, Martindale, San Marcos, Buda, Del Valle and Jarrell, allowing them flexibility to fund the resources they thought would be most helpful, from yoga to books on mental health and community health fairs.

The foundation also provided funding for a peer support specialist — someone with lived experience who can talk patrons through mental health challenges and help them find resources.

In Smithville, that’s Britany Khan Flores. She says she has experience with addiction and mental health challenges that help her identify with library patrons and build trust.

Britany Khan Flores, mental health peer specialist at the Smithville Public Library. Laura Skelding for KUT News

“I can tell a story … or hey, just share, ‘You know, when I was in that situation, this is what I did,’” Flores said. “I can’t say it’ll work for you, but it’s a possibility. If you’d like to try it, we can maybe strategize on how to get you there.”

The specialists were originally overseen by the nonprofit Via Hope, followed by Austin Mental Health Community when Via Hope shuttered last year. TaKisha Moore, an expert on the peer support model who oversaw the Libraries for Health peer support specialists through the end of 2025, said these non-clinical support figures are uniquely positioned to make a difference in rural communities. While access to clinicians can be important, Moore said trust often has to be built before people are ready to take that step.

“They feel more comfortable when they are just speaking to a regular person — someone that they feel is not like that therapist or that psychiatrist who has the power and ability to write on a piece of paper and maybe change their life in some kind of way,” she said. “I think this is a very low-staticky way to meet people where they are, with the least amount of friction and pushback to support and help.”

A new library mindset

Up north at the community library in Jarrell, there are currently two peer support specialists who work with different groups that make up key portions of the growing Jarrell community.

“One works with young families and parenting and parents who have children with disabilities, and the other works with more of the senior citizens,” said Susan Gregurek, the library’s director.

That second specialist also works with veterans, American Sign Language speakers, and with people dealing with grief, anxiety and depression. Gregurek says the peer support specialists have dramatically expanded what the small library is able to do.

Seeing the impact of the Libraries for Health program also expanded Gregurek’s idea of the library’s role in the Jarrell community, a small town that has experienced rapid growth in recent years. She began reaching out to other organizations and nonprofits to set up partnerships. Representatives from Foundation Communities sometimes come by to assist patrons with enrollment in SNAP, Medicare and Medicaid. AGE of Central Texas comes to teach programs on personal finances and identifying banking scams.

“We saw that we were becoming the hub of health, human, social services, business and educational services in the community, and so we rebranded from ‘Jarrell Community Library’ to ‘Jarrell Community Library and Resource Center,” she said.

The pilot program for Libraries for Health ended in 2025, but the St. David’s Foundation extended more funding to participating libraries, hoping to give them a runway to find long-term, sustainable funding for their new programming. Most will need to find additional funding sources by the end of 2026, either from grants or as part of city and county budgets.

Meanwhile, the St. David’s Foundation is trying to spread the word about Libraries for Health beyond Central Texas. Asante said a public toolkit for the program posted online has already been downloaded over 1,000 times.

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