At Mental Health Colorado, our priority is to ensure that anyone and everyone can get high-quality mental health and substance use care free of discrimination and with support from their communities.

In light of recent news that Senator Faith Winter is seeking medical treatment for alcohol use, it’s incredibly important to meet this moment with compassion and understanding. That means having productive conversations about how to reduce harm from alcohol use and ensure everyone has the chance to recover–rather than perpetuating the discrimination, ridicule, and vilification that so often prevent people from admitting they have a problem and seeking care.

Coming forward to friends and family members that you have a mental health or substance use condition can be incredibly difficult. Coming forward about your mental health or substance use condition knowing that it will be on the front page of newspapers in your community is terrifying and takes grit and bravery. That’s because people with mental health and substance use issues are viewed as “those people,” and are treated as if their struggles are moral failures. But “those people” are moms and dads, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters. They are people like any of us who are  trying to get through life the best they can with the cards they’ve been dealt.

We commend Sen. Faith Winter for publicly acknowledging that she is experiencing the incredibly pervasive disease of alcohol addiction. That essential first step is daunting and is taken by too few–there’s nothing that makes it easy for anyone.

For the rest of us, our essential first step is to meet Sen. Winter with support and compassion just as we would if she had any other kind of health condition. Health parity is not just something we must protect in law; it needs to be acted upon by our collective community if we are to truly realize it.

We stand proudly with Sen. Winter and anyone else experiencing a mental health or substance use condition. We see you. We support you. We are here to cheer you on as you confront both disease and discrimination. It’s not easy, but recovery is possible. We hope the Senator’s colleagues in the State Senate and House will support her as she gets the care she seeks and that we all can work to support any person in our lives with a mental health or substance use condition who is trying to find recovery and well-being.Health-based discrimination has no rightful place in our communities–not now, not ever.

In solidarity,
Mental Health Colorado