Jim Matney, far right, CEO of Colquitt Regional Health System, speaks with Lynn Wilson, second from right, during a reception Monday. Wilson said she's stepping back from any decision-making role with Moultrie's chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

MOULTRIE — Lynn Wilson, who has been a champion for mental health awareness and support in Colquitt County for two decades, is retiring. NAMI Moultrie held a reception Monday to honor her for her dedication.

Wilson transformed countless lives in Moultrie and Colquitt County, according to Dr. Vicki Colls, who will be chairman of the NAMI board upon Wilson’s retirement.

“She has shown us the way,” Colls said.

Wilson, a retired educator, started her journey in 2003, when a loved one was diagnosed with mental illness. She has described her struggles in numerous interviews and presentations to community groups.

“I had someone turn my anger into action,” she said at Monday’s reception. “I had a lot of anger.”

She said she received counseling from Ben Marion, who at the time was in charge of Turning Point hospital. She said he paved the way both for her own well-being and for her to pull together stakeholders to improve mental health options in Moultrie.

Among the other connections she has credited is the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), whose closest chapter was in Albany then.

“I don’t even remember how I found NAMI,” Wilson said in an interview in 2012. “I felt like finally I wasn’t a ship in the dark with no rudder.”

NAMI has a monthly program called NAMI Nights that includes an education portion and an optional support group. There is a supporting group for individuals living with mental illness and another group for their families and friends.

In June of 2012, Colquitt County held its first NAMI Night. It was an organizational meeting to work toward establishing a NAMI chapter here. NAMI Moultrie received its official affiliation in September of 2013. It held its first NAMI Walk fundraiser in October of the same year with Wilson as the organizer. This event raises money to fund NAMI programs in Georgia, which include support, education, research and advocacy involving schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (manic depression), major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and severe anxiety disorders.

“Most importantly, we want to raise awareness of mental illness, its treatment, and the path to recovery. Advocacy and education are the keys to continued progress as we work to eliminate ‘stignorance’ in this community,” Wilson has said of the NAMI Walk event.

About the same time, the UGA Archway Program in Colquitt County changed its focus to health issues, and it helped to establish the Healthy Colquitt Coalition. From this coalition was born the Mental Health Coalition and Wilson was invited to attend the first meeting.

She said in a previous interview that she noticed that Marion wasn’t leading the meeting and then he whispered to her, “Lynn, you’re the chairman.”

Eventually, NAMI Moultrie replaced the Mental Health Coalition, and Wilson, as a trained NAMI facilitator and fierce advocate for mental health awareness, has been among its leaders ever since.

Early on, during her tenure as the chairman for both of the organizations, an accountability court was established. It focused on drug offenders and defendants with mental illnesses. Also, the Moultrie Police Department received an award from NAMI for the number of its officers trained to respond to mental health crises. In 2012, the Mental Health Coalition helped to bring about the return of clinical service in Moultrie through Georgia Pines. Financial difficulties had closed Georgia Pines’ Moultrie facility in 2009.

Since then a Peer Support Center opened to provide 24/7 support for people struggling with mental illness.

In February 2023, Georgia Pines moved its services from the dilapidated building where they had been housed to a newly renovated facility that the city rents to it for $1 per year.

While Wilson was involved to some degree in all those changes, she deflected credit. “I don’t know everything,” she told attendees at Monday’s reception, “but if you get the right people at the table, magic happens.”

When the Moultrie-Colquitt County Chamber of Commerce named Wilson Woman of the Year in 2014, individuals had double nominated her. This was unusual, chamber officials said at the time.

Lesa Moser, who wrote a letter of recommendation for Wilson on behalf of the Moultrie Federated Guild, wrote, “Lynn Wilson started calling attention to a need for mental health care in Moultrie and continued until she had a group working with her to get mental health care for our community.”

In her letter of recommendation, Moser referenced a letter Wilson wrote to the editor of The Moultrie Observer in 2011. Wilson wrote, “No longer can we allow the stigma that has plagued those living with mental illness. Mental illness is a physical phenomenon. We can no longer hide our heads in the sand about the spectrum of mental illnesses that devastate promising human lives. We must become aware. We must develop understanding. We must become advocates. We must become passionate. We must become part of the solution.”

In a magazine article for The Moultrie Observer, Wilson said, “You have to hold on to hope, because there is hope. We can raise the quality of life of the community as a whole with every person we can help.”