An effective and well-functioning behavioral health system should treat people in need early to prevent a crisis further down the road. But in Colorado, our system fails to do so year after year.

For far too long, behavioral health has been a forgotten component of health care, resulting in a broken system that has continually left too many Coloradans without the critical care they need. The situation has only worsened over the last two years due to the lack of access to services and exacerbated mental health issues surrounding the pandemic.

Colorado’s health care system should deliver affordable, high-quality, and accessible care to everyone — including mental health care and substance use disorder treatment. But our state is at the bottom of the pack when it comes to behavioral health care, and the results speak for themselves.

In Colorado, nearly one-third of adults with a mental health issue report they are not getting the treatment they need, according to Mental Health America. Over the last decade, youth suicide has increased an astonishing 51%, and because we don’t provide adequate services, our children are sent out-of-state to address their behavioral health needs. Hundreds of Coloradans suffer in our jail cells because they have nowhere else to go, exacerbating the problem and making their conditions worse. According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), the latest data show that 1,477 Coloradans died of drug overdoses in 2020 — the most overdose deaths ever recorded in the state and a 38% increase from 2019.

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