With Mental Health: A Crisis in Colorado, The Gazette of Colorado Springs launched a year long-endeavor encompassing some two dozen major installments of stories, photos, videos, graphics and charts depicting the plummeting status of mental health care in one of the nation’s most unique states. Despite 300 annual days of sun, a booming economy and an unparalleled reputation for physical fitness, Colorado’s residents rank among the most mentally ill people in the country. It’s estimated that about 20 percent of the state’s adult population — about 832,000 people — is living with some kind of mental health condition, according to a 2019 report from Mental Health America, and nearly 450,000 of them aren’t being treated for that illness. That singular crisis lies at the root of so many others: homelessness, poverty, substance abuse and violence. Colorado’s efforts to make health care effective, accessible and affordable have been inconsistent at best and a failure at worst. The Gazette’s statewide data reporting and scores of interviews of mental health experts, counselors and people struggling with mental health diagnoses and their families have revealed:
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Over the past three years, Colorado has seen the highest increase in teen suicides in the nation — jumping 58 percent, more than twice what the nation experienced.
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The top five reasons people go to emergency rooms in Colorado ‘s largest hospital chain are all related to behavioral health. Hospital emergency rooms have become the primary first stop for mental health crises in Colorado, in large part due to a lack of accessible providers. More than 50,000 visits to Colorado emergency rooms during the past three years were primarily caused by mental health needs, adding up to more than $76 million in costs.
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Twenty-two of our 64 counties don’t have a licensed psychologist. In El Paso County, there are 20 psychiatrists for 700,000 people, a rate of one psychiatrist for every 35,000 people.
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Only half of post-9/11 veterans with diagnosed mental illness in Colorado receive care.
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Approximately half of Colorado children who commit suicide have been to physicians within 30 days of their deaths. Colorado children are routinely transferred by expensive ambulance or airplane trips to institutions in other states because of a lack of in-state beds.
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The biggest mental health institutions in the state by far are now are our prisons and jails, a grim reality with devastating consequences. More than one-third of all prison inmates have moderate to critical mental health needs — a far higher rate than that of society as a whole. Four out of five women in our prisons have a mental illness.
Even the suggestion of a coherent mental health system in Colorado is a fallacy, experts say. Heidi Baskfield, vice president of population health and advocacy at Children’s Hospital, points out, for example, that the state’s system for juveniles does not interface with adult care. At 18, the mentally ill child ages out.
“There really is not a mental health system in Colorado,” said Nancy VanDeMark, interim president and CEO of Mental Health Colorado and former director of the state’s Office of Behavioral Health. “Especially if we think of mental health as including substance use services.” The series graphically presented the bad news, but it also sought solutions, as Gazette reporters and photographers identified benchmark programs in other states that are widely credited with elevating behaviorial health care above national norms and to humane and enlightened courses of action.
We traveled to Chicago, where the Cook County Jail has become a beacon of hope for the incarcerated. We went to Miami-Dade County, Florida, where an intense effort to decriminalize mental illness is in its second decade. We went to Tulsa, Okla., which has embraced a vigorous “housing-first” model. The idea: Rather than jail or the streets, give the mentally ill a stable place to live as the first recourse. We also traveled around Colorado, reporting on the efforts by individual cities and counties to confront the crisis.