A task force charged with addressing Lee County's inadequate mental health services has divided its challenge into four goals - a sign of progress, although each of those aims is daunting.

The 27-member group formed last November and just completed an outline of how it intends to tackle the problem. Lee County has a well-documented shortage of mental and behavioral health services and no hospital beds for residents suffering from diseases of the mind.

The group is headed by United Way Vice President Greg Gardner and Elizabeth Givens, executive director of the local National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, chapter. It formed in the wake of a 2007 Lee Memorial Health System-sponsored "community visioning" exercise when residents voted mental health as the No. 1 health-related concern in the area. That includes services for people with drug and alcohol addictions.

"Everyone knew there were issues, but nobody knew how to get it done," Givens said.

The group decided the following:

• Come up with a community model on how to treat mental illnesses and addictions. Dr. Marianne Krouk, the Lee Mental Health medical director, is heading research into practices and interventions proven to be effective. Afterward, she and her colleagues must persuade public institutions and the private medical community to embrace the plan. Krouk met with doctors this week to begin those discussions.

• Figure out the money. Richard Riley of Finemark Bank & Trust and fellow volunteers will analyze the state, local, philanthropic and private dollars that flow into area practices and agencies such as the justice system and school district. That team will try to figure out if the money is adequate to support the model proposed by Krouk's group, whether organizations are duplicating efforts and whether collaboration may free up dollars.

• Recruit more community leaders willing to tackle the problem. The medical community is involved, although the task force was designed for representation from business and other community leaders.

• Get the community to understand these diseases and implications of inadequate services.

Improvements can't come quickly enough.

"The first time I had to tell someone there's nothing for you in Lee County, I was devastated. I had to walk away from my desk," said Dianne Derby, the NAMI office manager, who fields many of the 100-or-so phone calls per month from people seeking help.

The situation has worsened in the last three months as jobs and insurance coverage disappear, Derby said. Some providers charge their fees on a sliding scale, but "$50 might as well be a million when you're not working," Derby said.

Access problems range from unaffordable fees - many psychiatrists don't take private insurance - to too few state-funded services such as counseling at Lee Mental Health to an overall shortage of doctors.

Participants hope a cohesive mental health and substance abuse treatment model will lure more practitioners here.

"Mental health is so incredibly different than the way we approach other disciplines in medicine," said Carol Conway, a co-owner of CRS Technologies in Cape Coral. She's among the task force members trying to establish a community model. "It's not funneled through primary care. As a result, it's sitting outside the system that is in place without any clear reason as to why."

That problem is not unique to Lee, Conway said, but she's hoping the county can figure out a way to better connect people to the kind of services they need.

Riley said he believes Lee County is ready to acknowledge the long-closeted mental health problem.

"It's coming out into the open," he said.

That's critical, said Derby of NAMI. She is being treated for depression, an illness brought on by a severe head injury years ago. Derby said she was fortunate to lock in with Lee Mental Health doctors four years ago when she sought treatment, and she knows how much her life has turned around as a result of medical help.

"If you can get into a doctor there is hope. If you can't, you have a chemical imbalance and no way to correct it. It's like being a diabetic and unable to get insulin," Derby said.