News Clips
MOUNTAIN WEST COULD BENEFIT FROM A NATION-WIDE THREE-DIGIT SUICIDE HOTLINE
By: Ali Budner
July 25, 2018
If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
The House just passed a bill to create a 9-1-1 type service nationwide for suicide prevention. This change could be especially important for our region, which has some of the highest suicide rates in the country.
Utah Congressman Chris Stewart sponsored the legislation. He said there is a national ten-digit hotline and other various ten-digit numbers people can call from state to state already, but it can be diffic...
COLORADO FAMILY FIGHTS INSURANCE COMPANY TO GET MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT FOR THEIR SON
By: Jaclyn Allen
July 20, 2018
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. -- A Greenwood Village couple says they fought their insurance company to get mental health treatment for their teenage son, and it was finally approved -- a month after he died. Two years later, they are fighting with mental health advocates to change public policy in what they call "a matter of life and death."
Karen and Jeffrey Galinkin remember their son Zac as a highly intelligent, musical child, who also struggled with mental health issues such as depressive psychosis for years.
"Here you go, ...
MORE CONTROVERSY OVER PUSH FOR RED FLAG LAWS
By: Shaul Turner
July 16, 2018
DENVER -- Gun violence involving those with mental health issues sits at the center of the debate over what can be done to keep it from happening.
Former lawmaker Andrew Romanoff, now CEO of Mental Health Colorado is fighting to keep guns out of the hands of those struggling with mental health issues and to make sure they receive the treatment they need.
Romanoff said a red flag bill, named in honor of fallen Douglas County sheriff's deputy Zackari Parrish, had the potential to save lives by allowing the courts to temporar...
WOMAN WANTS CLIMB TO HIGHLIGHT MENTAL HEALTH
By: Nick Puckett
July 9, 2018
A local woman is setting out to summit Mount Kilimanjaro at age 65 in an effort to raise awareness for mental health.
Claire Averill, of Highlands Ranch, will begin her eight-day trip up the highest point in Africa on July 12. She said the climb will be an intense struggle for her to bring to light the lifetime of struggle people with a mental illness suffer. Averill said this would all be new to her.
“I wanted to do something that I felt would be a struggle for me because of what those go through that are afflicted with any mental ...
MINORITIES FACE HIGHER RATES OF MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, LOWER TREATMENT RATES
By: Nicole Brady
July 9, 2018
DENVER — This month, Mental Health Colorado is shining the spotlight on minority communities, who deal with mental health issues at a higher rate than white populations.
Mental Health Colorado CEO Andrew Romanoff says there are a number of reasons for the disparity, including racism and discrimination, poverty, and a lack of mental health professionals of color.
"The therapy relationship depends on finding a mental health care professional who can speak your language, who can understand your culture, who can relate to you." ...
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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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, ...
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 ...
