Rapid Mental Health Response for Colorado Youth
Good afternoon, Members of the Committee. I’m Vincent
Atchity, President and CEO of Mental Health Colorado. Mental Health Colorado is
a non-profit organization working to achieve healthier minds across the
lifespan for all Coloradans. Since 1953, we have represented consumer interests
in our efforts to promote well-being, increase access to quality care and
services, and end the shame and discrimination persistently associated with
mental health and substance use conditions.
Mental Health Colorado fully supports HB21-1258 and a Rapid
Mental Health Response for Colorado Youth. We know that early intervention is
highly effective in promoting good health outcomes.
Many children are facing the steepest climb of their lives
as we try as a state to come up out of this. They will not all be able to
thrive with their peers who’ve experienced greater fortune if we do not act
now, with all our intelligence and love, to bring every player on our team
along.
Some children have done better than others during prolonged
periods of remote education. Some children have had the support and
encouragement of stably employed parents who were able to work from homes where
a productive routine could be maintained. Some have benefited from teachers who
excelled at adapting to remote learning.
But those who have managed to thrive through all of this are
not enough. Just some of Colorado’s children…is not enough.
Right now is the time to focus our intelligent efforts and
resources on identifying the young people who are facing the hardest
challenges. We know who many of them are already. And we definitely know what
they have experienced since March of 2020. While many of our children have
mercifully been spared the worst of the pandemic, there are brave and heroic Colorado children
whose parents became unemployed due to the economic shutdown. There are heroic
Colorado children who have lost the support of family financial stability, who
have lost their homes. And there are heroic Colorado children who have lost the
lives of their parents and grandparents, and their aunts and uncles. The brave
and heroic children of Colorado need the support of their big team as they face
the challenges of the months ahead.
We Coloradans pride ourselves on our wealth and resources,
on our intelligence.Colorado should not have to rank in the bottom third of the
nation for mental health needs versus access to care.
Most of us have children in our lives. As we
implement this, we will be able to make it known to them that we are vigilant
for their well-being, that we need them to be well, and that we, as a state, are
investing in them with urgency.
We are grateful to the bipartisan bill sponsors, Representatives Dafna Michaelson Jenet (D)
and Kevin Van Winkle (R), and Senators Janet Buckner (D) and Rob Woodward (R)
for recognizing that now is the time and for issuing this call to action. And
we are grateful to the Colorado Department of Human Services Office of
Behavioral Health for expediting a plan for implementing this statewide crisis
intervention for Colorado’s children. And we will celebrate the brigade of
professional care providers who will step into this next breach in our pandemic
defense effort for the sake of our children, and dedicate the extra hours in
the day it may take to ensure that we are properly safeguarding the most
valuable and essential assets we have as a community of humans.
Thank you for your support of this bill and of a strong
recovery for all Colorado’s children.
