Digital tools connect rural Texans to mental health care
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In Bastrop County, Texas, the public health department is implementing a new digital platform to deliver mental health support to rural residents.
This article was originally published by Daily Yonder.
The Bastrop County Public Health Department, the first new local health department established in Texas in more than 30 years, is turning to digital tools to address growing mental health needs in one of the state’s rapidly expanding exurban counties.
After conducting community discussion groups across Bastrop County, public health officials found that residents consistently identified mental health support and easier access to care as urgent priorities. In response, the department partnered with CredibleMind to launch a free online platform offering mental health assessments, self-guided resources, wellness tools, and directories of local services in both English and Spanish.
“We hope that this program can especially help our more rural residents by providing them with self-help tools and exercises, as well as by acting as a steppingstone to connect them to more extensive services within the county,” said Adriana Rodriguez, an information specialist with the Bastrop County Public Health Department.
Bastrop County is among a few dozen exurban counties in Texas, a Daily Yonder designation that identifies metropolitan counties where more than a third of residents are rural according to the Census definition.
The county is also designated as a partial mental health professional shortage area, meaning federal data show there are too few mental health providers to meet local demand and that existing services are often difficult to access or overextended.
These shortages have been felt by the community.
"Our mental health needs have increased exponentially, especially since the pandemic,” said Kristi Powell, Bastrop County’s Indigent Health Care director, one of the partners included as a community resource on the CredibleMind platform. “People need treatment for it, and they're not getting it, especially here."
The program was developed with input from local mental health organizations and community partners across the county. According to the public health department, in the first six months since launching in September 2025, the platform reached 1,873 unique users and achieved a 43.1% assessment completion rate, well above the platform average, showing strong community engagement. Rodriguez said dozens of users have also accessed the site’s Spanish-language resources.
“One of the biggest themes that came from [the community] discussions was a need for mental health resources, and a way to easily access those resources,” Rodriguez said. “This prompted us to connect with CredibleMind, so that we could provide mental health help from a public health approach, while also making use of their ‘community resources’ function to provide people with a list of local mental health resources in Bastrop County.”
The program is already serving many populations across the county.
“I think it’s a wonderful program,” Powell said. “I think it has been especially helpful for school-age children and for employees who want to take assessments and access tips and resources.”
Still, Powell said that access barriers remain, particularly for low-income residents and older adults who may lack reliable internet service or digital literacy skills.
“I think [CredibleMind] could help, but many of our clients aren’t very tech-savvy,” Powell said. “Using an online platform would be challenging for them because some don’t have internet access, and others aren’t familiar with how to use or navigate those tools.”
According to 2023 data, nearly 15% of Bastrop County residents lacked broadband internet access, underscoring the challenges of relying on digital health services in rural communities.
Even with those limitations, county officials said the platform’s rollout across schools, healthcare organizations and community groups marks an important step toward expanding mental health support in a county where services have long struggled to keep pace with demand.
“This platform exists with the goal of helping you manage your mental health needs — whether that be giving you access to tools that might help you at home pertaining to over 100 different topics, giving you a way to easily view the resources around you and what you have access to, or simply helping you understand what you're feeling and where you might need to go next,” Rodriguez said. “We truly hope this platform acts as a benefit to our community.”