This three-part series by Kristin Jones and Joe Mahoney of Rocky Mountain PBS I-News in Denver examined the state of behavioral health care in Colorado. The findings of this investigation are not promising. The costs of untreated mental illnesses run into the billions of dollars each year, factoring in medical expenses, lost wages, disability payments, and the price of housing the mentally ill in county jails and state prisons, among other quantifiable factors. As big as the financial costs of untreated mental illness can be, the personal ones are much greater. In Colorado, people with mental illnesses are more than five times as likely to wind up in jail or prison than in a hospital treatment bed, the I-News investigation showed.
