I’ve often wondered why we don’t take mental health issues as seriously as physical health issues, and provide much more treatment for the former.
Mental illness carries a lot of stigma and many people have misconceptions about what it is and what to do about it. That’s because the mental health care safety net is currently failing across Colorado and the nation.
America has a major mental health crisis, one of the worst in the industrial world. We must act urgently to provide financial support for more patient beds and better access to services at the state level to curb the alarming rise in suicides, depression, mental anguish, anxiety and more.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, in 2022 approximately 40 percent of adults in the United States reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder. That’s an increase from the 10 percent who reported these symptoms in 2019.
Mental Health America, which addresses the needs of people with mental illness and promotes mental health for all, provided some key findings about mental health before and after the pandemic in 2021:
In 2019, before the pandemic, 19.86% of adults, the equivalent of 50 million Americans, suffered from a mental health condition.
More than half of adults with mental illnesses (more than 27 million people) do not receive treatment.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Thursday that more than 40 percent of teens report constantly feeling sad or hopeless, and 20 percent say they have contemplated suicide.
More than 60% of young people with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment.
At the end of 2021, Vincent Atchity, executive director of Mental Health Colorado, said that about 400 presumed innocent Coloradans were being held in jail, awaiting access to mental health care, because they were too incompetent to participate in a judicial process.
The United States has been inconsistent about its support for mental health initiatives for a long time.
President Jimmy Carter’s administration passed the Mental Health Systems Act shortly after he took office in 1977. Its goal was to create more awareness and funding for mental health services across the country.
But in 1981, President Ronald Reagan and Congress repealed Carter’s legislation by passing the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which greatly reduced federal funding for mental illness, leaving that responsibility to the states.
In Colorado, we have 17 regional health care centers across the state and have relied on them for more than half a century to help people who are homeless, Medicaid or underinsured, or pay for private treatment to stabilize people in crisis . Unfortunately, there is a wide disparity in the accessibility, quality, and speed of center services.
Dr. John Talbott, president of the American Psychiatric Association, said: “The psychiatrists involved in policymaking at the time certainly oversold community treatment,” he said. The policies were based on “wishful thinking, in part on the enormity of the problem and the lack of a silver bullet to solve it,” he said.
Widespread homelessness emerged in Colorado in the 1980s, in part because states put mental health patients on the streets.
Colorado had more mental health beds in the early 1980s than we do today. Since then, the state’s population has doubled from 3 million to nearly 6 million. A minimum of 50 beds per 100,000 people is considered necessary to provide adequate care for serious mental illness; Colorado has about 10 beds for every 100,000 people.
Colorado ranks 51st, last, in access to mental health services and treatment, according to Mental Health America. The number has worsened due to the pandemic, underfunding, and a lack of focus on forming a uniform statewide approach.
“The centers and the state have been failing people,” said Robert Werthweim, former director of the Colorado Office of Behavioral Health.
In July, that office will become the Behavioral Health Administration under the direction of Dr. Morgan Medlock, who becomes a new member of Governor Jared Polis’ Cabinet. His mission will be to streamline and improve the mental health care system.
We need to thank Boulder-based State Representative Judy Amabile, who is sponsoring two critical mental health bills in the current legislative session: HB22-1256 and HB22-1303.
“It is time for our state to make a bold and sound investment in providing treatment to Coloradans with serious mental illness,” Amabile wrote in the Colorado Sun.
Ask your representatives to support both bills, particularly HB22-1303, which increases the number of inpatient residential behavioral health beds. Allocates $65 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to increase the number of beds to 16 at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Fort Logan, as well as an additional 125 beds statewide. This is just a start to address a much larger problem.
HB22-1256 expands the rights of patients when on mental health leave. The sponsors say that, among the key changes, it would strengthen the state’s involuntary civil commitment system to protect the rights of patients and providers.
Certain conditions make it even more important for immediate and long-term mental health care, particularly in the areas of schizophrenia, bipolar and other psychotic disorders, often fueled by serious addiction problems.
Access to care was further reduced on February 6 when Boulder Mental Health Partners, a private nonprofit serving Boulder County and one of 17 regional health centers, abruptly closed its walk-in crisis center. on weekends and cut back on weekday hours.
In Boulder County, the reduction in services came at a time when it was facing mental health challenges resulting from two tragedies, the King Soopers mass shooting in March 2021 and the Marshall fire in December 2021. .
All of this at a time when economic insecurity and pain persist as the pandemic enters its third year.
As a result, many mental health patients end up in jail, emergency rooms or shelters, or are put back on the street without treatment.
Colorado’s mental health system has not been meeting the needs of our most vulnerable residents, neighbors, and family members for a long time. Let’s change that for the better.
Jim Martin can be reached at [email protected]
