Congressman Dave Loebsack traveled around Iowa this week discussing several issues, including mental health.

Loebsack kicked off a “Breaking the Stigma” tour about mental illness in Iowa City on Wednesday. During a solar tour of Washington County on Thursday, Loebsack mentioned his mental health tour, “Getting around talking about mental health issues that’s really important. As you know we see an increase all the time in the number of folks in Iowa that struggle with mental health issues, and I talk about my own story of my mom. She was a single parent, had four kids, and an 11th grade education and she struggled with mental illness her whole adult life so that’s a big part of what drives me and I’m really focusing on the stigma part of that this week too because there’s still that stigma attached to mental illness. Just something we gotta break, we gotta get rid of that.” Some of the stops on Loebsack’s mental health tour were Clinton, Centerville, and Burlington. May is recognized as mental health awareness month.