Gov. Mark Gordon

A seemingly unfathomable triple murder and suicide in the small Big Horn Basin town of Byron this week is a reminder that Wyoming government and communities need to “double down” on combatting mental health issues, Gov. Mark Gordon said.

“My heart goes out to the families,” Gordon said, speaking to WyoFile reporters in his office Wednesday morning. He noted that legislators meeting one floor above had ties to the family involved, as tragedies ripple quickly through the social fabric of the nation’s least populous state.

“This is a restatement of how important it is that we have compassion,” he said, “that we listen, that we understand, that we recognize that there are people that can help, and we can reach out to them.”

Time will tell what challenges the Harshman family in Byron faced. The mother is suspected of shooting four of her children before turning a gun on herself at their home Monday. The suspected shooter’s husband told a reporter for the news outlet Cowboy State Daily that his wife struggled with depression ahead of the shooting. 

While emphasizing he had no insight into the woman’s life, Gordon said in a state with a consistently high suicide rate the tragedy was a reminder of struggles with mental health issues that stretch beyond the roughly 600-person farming town. 

“Coming from a small community myself, I know how incredibly devastating and indelible something like that is on the community,” he said. The comment had deeper roots than he spoke aloud. Gordon’s home is on a ranch outside of Buffalo. There he has faced his own unfathomable loss — his first wife was struck and killed while jogging, leaving him for a time as the single father of two young daughters.  

Mental health initiatives

Gordon has made improving the state’s mental health services a goal of his second term in office. In 2022, he launched WY We Care, a mental health initiative that in 2023 featured “mental health town halls,” where Gordon and top officials with the health and family services departments sought feedback from communities about where gaps in services existed. His administration has also contracted with an expert in suicide prevention who has provided trainings in suicide interventions in several counties. 

But on Wednesday he acknowledged that the state continues to fall short. “We just don’t have enough resources on a government level,” he said. The current Legislature, with its focus on property taxes, election laws and cutting back on government, has yet to take on the state’s mental health system in any meaningful way.

“These are tough times for families,” Gordon said, noting the high costs of child care as one of the stresses raising a family can bring. “It feels to me like as a state … we’re not supporting young families.”

But limited government resources aside, Gordon said he has endeavored through his outreach program to shift the conversation about mental health in a state known for empty landscapes and tough, independent people. 

“As a state, we need to double down on ‘how do we help our neighbors?’” Gordon said. “How can we make it so that it is absolutely an easy and correct and comfortable thing to say, ‘I’m having trouble right now?’”