We can help you, because we are you.
Inner Circle Mental Health was founded by Kate and Collin Cooper in 2024 with a mission to help first responders and veterans break the mental health stigma and get help when they need it.
While Kate is the one with a mental health education, she was inspired to get into this business because of Collin’s long struggle with mental health in his service related fields. As an Army veteran and law enforcement officer in Oklahoma, everything was great for Collin. Until it wasn’t.
A mental health diagnosis, along with a decision to become sober from alcohol, which he had been using to self medicate from his mental illness and trauma sustained in his career fields, led to a two year stint where Collin couldn’t get out of bed unless it was to go to work.
Kate spent every single day leaving for work in the morning over the course of these two years expecting Collin to be dead when she returned.
From the outside looking in, no one would even suspect. When he was at work, he did a good job. He never let anyone know how much he was struggling and how much his life was truly falling apart. Kate spend so much time begging him to rejoin life, to participate in it with his family, to do literally anything– but it just wasn’t working. He was so deep in his depression that there was no way out for him. And still– no one else knew.
The stigma in the first responder culture is so deep that he feared if he reached out for help, he would lose his job, and as is common with first responders– at some point their job becomes all they have. All of their friends are work friends, because no one else truly understands the horrors that they see. Their entire life is their work and their work is their lifeline.
Together they work to normalize seeking help. Normalize marriage counseling (because they say they don’t know anyone who goes to as much marriage counseling as them) and they strive every day to be better people and set an example. They understand the dangers of the mental health stigma in first responder and other high trauma fields because the see it. They know the dangers of being silent because Collin almost did not survive. And they’ve made it their mission to bring a light to this topic and help others feel less alone.