1041 results for author: Mental Health Colorado

CLOSE THE GAP

June 28, 2018 July is Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. Every month ought to be. Higher rates of poverty, lower rates of coverage, and the persistence of discrimination—among other barriers—often put mental health services out of reach. The result: Coloradans of color are less likely to receive the care they need. How do we close that gap? We can start by enforcing the laws we’ve got, including requirements for mental health parity and network adequacy. We can expand and diversify the mental health workforce. We can promote respect. And we can bridge language differences. You’ll find mental health screenings in English and ...

MEDICAID WON’T PAY FOR TEEN’S MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT

By: Rob Low June 25, 2018 AURORA, Colo. -- Jace Elliott, 15, was born with an extra chromosome.  Doctors says his extra chromosome is the reason why he can be sweet one moment and chase his mom with a knife the next moment. "He was stabbing the door and kept stabbing and hitting the door and telling me he wanted to kill me and he wanted me dead and he hated me," said Elliott's mom Amber Soderstrom, who called 911 while locking herself inside her bathroom. She said the April 9 incident stemmed from her son's frustration while struggling to put his pants on. The Commerce City mom told the Problem Solvers she's called the police ...

TIME TO TALK: ‘THERE IS HELP AND HOPE’

By: Alex DeWind June 21, 2018 Lora Thomas vividly remembers the day: a snowy February afternoon in 2012. She was Douglas County’s coroner then and she was standing in the kitchen of a home in Parker, talking with a father who had lost his son to suicide just hours before. A year earlier, he told her, his son was an all-star athlete, taking advanced placement classes and in a serious relationship. But when he started smoking marijuana, his grades slipped, the father said, he got kicked off the football team, his girlfriend broke up with him. Thomas, coroner from 2011-15, tried to visit every family who lost a young child by suicide during her ...

SCHOOL TOOLKIT, ONLINE SCREENINGS GEARED TOWARD EARLY INTERVENTION

By: Alex DeWind June 21, 2018 Mental Health Colorado, the state’s leading mental health advocacy organization, offers two unique tools for the public to promote the prevention and early intervention of mental illness — one geared specifically to youth. On its website, www.mentalhealthcolorado.org/resources/school, is a School Mental Health Toolkit, which serves as a blueprint for adequate mental health services in schools, the organization says. The tool kit’s overarching goal is to build social and emotional learning curriculums in all schools, said Andrew Romanoff, CEO and president of Mental Health Colorado. “We know ...

SHOULD YOUR CHILD’S TEACHER ALSO BE THEIR THERAPIST?

By: Sara Israelsen-Hartley June 20, 2018 WASHINGTON — For years, Marc Brackett, founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, has been asking people — especially teens — how they feel. In one survey of more than 22,000 high schoolers, 75 percent of the responses were negative, while only 2 percent were neutral. “Tired, bored, stressed — that’s how high school students feel,” Brackett said Friday during the annual Mental Health America conference in Washington, D.C. “How many of you feel that’s a recipe for mental health, innovation, creativity, achieving purpose and passion and having your dreams come ...

AND THE WINNER IS…

June 21, 2018 Let’s say you’re running for governor. The primary is Tuesday, so you have just a few days left to make your case. Here’s what we want to know: What will you do to improve Colorado’s mental health? That’s the question we put to nine gubernatorial candidates earlier this year. Watch the full debate or a four-minute recap at mentalhealthcolorado.org/governor2018. Most of the candidates said they wanted to boost mental health care. They differed when asked how they would pay for it, what steps they would take to address drug and alcohol addiction, and whether they would strengthen insurance reform. One proposal ...

AFTER CELEBRITY SUICIDES, CALLS TO COLORADO CRISIS HOTLINE SPIKED. THAT SHOWS HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO TALK ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH.

By: John Ingold June 15, 2018 Following the deaths by suicide last week of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, calls to a Colorado suicide-prevention hotline soared. Colorado Crisis Services experienced a 60 percent increase in call volume over normal levels between Friday night and noon Sunday, said Nourie Boraie, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Human Services. Most of those additional calls came through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which routes all calls from a Colorado area code to the statewide line. To Andrew Romanoff, the president and CEO of Mental Health Colorado, the outpouring of need shows the importance ...

HOW A QUARTER CAN KEEP STRUGGLING NON-CRIMINALS IN DENVER OUT OF JAIL

By: Michael Roberts June 14, 2018 Tonight will mark the official launch of Caring 4 Denver, a proposed ballot measure that aims to raise $45 million annually a quarter at a time in order to increase the amount of mental health and substance abuse services in the city. State representative Leslie Herod, one of the concept's main backers, stresses that this funding will also help law enforcement, since people struggling with such issues all too often wind up behind bars even when they haven't committed a crime. "We need to do something more proactively to get them the services they need," says Herod, who'll be on hand at the June 14 ...

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TALKING ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH

June 10, 2018 High profile deaths have led to some very candid conversations about mental health lately. Mental Health Colorado President and CEO Andrew Romanoff joins us for a conversation on the topic. Originally appeared on 9News.