Debra Falvo sounded game, if a little tired, as she described her days in Washington, D.C., as an exercise in "whining for dollars and policy change" on behalf of Valley Mental Health.

Last week, the nonprofit that serves people who are mentally ill or addicted announced it, too, was a victim of the Great Recession. Facing a deficit of between $8 million and $10 million, it will have to lay off as many as 125 of its roughly 1,000 employees.

It has to be galling for Falvo who has spent her career - initially as a nurse, now as Valley Mental Health's CEO - working with people who might live in torment for years, maybe decades, before they get help.

Some have debilitating depression, others bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorders. Some cut or burn themselves. There are kids and teenagers and adults, in-patient and out-patient, at the agency's campuses. And there are therapists, psychiatrist, case managers, social workers and medical staff.

Falvo was in nursing school when she rotated through an inpatient psychiatric ward. Then and there, she decided that's what she wanted to do. So after graduation, she found another psychiatric ward where she could work with people who, as she puts it, "simply hooked my heart."

In 1987, she joined Valley Mental Health and "watched that program grow up. I ended up seeing the individuals we serve as amazing," she says. "My bad day is nothing compared to [what] these wonderful heroes" can live with every day.

Along the way, Falvo earned a master's degree in health service administration and served as a Medicaid administrator. She became chief executive officer about five years ago.

Now she'll lead the agency through tough economic times and an evolution in the way it provides services to about 20,000 people a year in Salt Lake, Summit and Tooele counties.

While in Washington for a national conference of behavioral health care providers, Falvo stopped by Sen. Orrin Hatch's office to talk about Medicaid, Medicare and how national policy resonates on the local level.

The coming months are bound to be tough. The layoffs will affect every level of the agency. A hiring freeze has been in place since 2008, but the economic climate made the layoffs inevitable.

And after years of planning, Valley Mental Health will be moving to "person-centered care," a model that has been developed and tested for guidelines and outcomes across the nation.

In short, it's a more specific way of involving the client in his or her own treatment and recovery. A care coordinator helps the client set up an individualized care regime; medication, therapy and crisis care will be available as always.

"I really want to stress that we really are doing things to provide the best possible care for the most people," Falvo told me.

Jill Hollingshaus, long a Valley Mental Health client, now a member of its board of directors and a supervisor at an affiliated company, says Falvo has been a friend for 15 years.

"I really trust her, and she's had to make some serious changes," Hollingshaus says. "I wouldn't want that on my shoulders. I caught Debra almost teary-eyed about having to let people go."

But Falvo has her own way of coping. Every now and then, weary of the administrative world and "pushing paper," she'll go into the units and talk to the people there.

It's a way of getting, as she puts it, "a fix, a client fix, to remind me of what I'm doing."

pegmcentee@sltrib.com

Correction » Leonard Burningham began working with the Eagle Ranch Ministries' Jennie Dudley in 1989. Thursday's column had the wrong year.