Amanda Hammons: My name's Amanda Hammonds. I'm from Raleigh County, West Virginia. So I am currently a bachelor's level health care provider with mental health. So I see individuals in group settings and individuals that have been impacted by SUD [Substance Use Disorder]. I actually started college in 2017 to go after my bachelor's in health service. The college actually required for us to have health coverage and I couldn't afford it. So I applied to Medicaid. So I have a high functioning mental health condition. It caused me a lot of difficulty in college and I'd finally gotten diagnosed and I found medication, I found a therapist and it changed my whole life. I was able to function in the world on a daily basis. Um I was able to acclimate myself in college and in personal situations and social settings and it truly just changed everything. I had no idea that I was undiagnosed for so many years because I could never afford the medical care to seek to be diagnosed to begin with. Medicaid sustained me through that process of college and, and then I got to graduate. When I graduated uh and got a job, I lost my Medicaid, I think they told me it was about $12 over the amount that I needed to make for that. And so I was rushing around as a new graduate in a new full time job trying to find medical care. So I was without mental health medication for, for months, which made me very unstable. I had a car accident and then I had another. So within nine months, I had two car accidents which completely totaled both of my vehicles because I was unmedicated. That situation was really, really scary for me. Um, and I've been trying to look for medical care ever since, but West Virginia Medicaid was what taught me what it was like to find out that I had mental health condition to begin with and how to seek the proper care and what that looked like to be able to afford therapy. And now I'm just without, I've been without, since May when I graduated. I really miss my therapist. Um, and it's, I've looked around to try to find affordable mental care and it's, it's nothing that I could ever be able to afford until I suppose I graduate with my master's. And if I do that I could potentially be at a rate of pay that I would be able to afford mental health medication.
Amanda Hammons: I love public speaking. I think it's the only way to really have those little tiny voices be heard and I'm a little tiny person and I want to speak for the other little tiny people that don't have an opportunity to have their voice be heard. Yeah. :)
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