Events in the 1990s and the first few years of the 21st century caused our state and our nation significant strain, stress, and grief. In 1999, MHC aided the community following the mass shooting at Columbine High School by helping to organize support groups, staffing call-in mental health help lines, and producing a booklet about the crisis for parents entitled, “A Partner for Parents: A Handbook for Healing,” in collaboration with the Jefferson Center for Mental Health. This booklet was distributed to more than 70,000 households in the area.
A major focus during this time was achieving equal health coverage of physical and mental health conditions – often referred to as “parity.” MHC spearheaded the Coalition for Mental Health in Health Care Reform, an umbrella group of 30 mental health organizations working to advocate for appropriate and adequate mental health care in state and national reform efforts. The Coalition represented all aspects of the mental health community and was instrumental in writing a position paper on the need for equal mental health benefits. One of its major victories came in 1997, when Governor Roy Romer signed HB 1192 into law. This law required insurance companies to cover six biologically based mental disorders,
establishing partial or limited parity.
MHC has also been instrumental in creating several programs that are now independent entities. In 2006, The Triage Project began as a series of inter-agency and interdisciplinary discussions, convened and sponsored by MHC. Metro Crisis Services – now Rocky Mountain Crisis Partners – was designed to address the issue of ill-equipped and unprepared hospital emergency rooms being overrun with individuals dealing with a mental health or substance use condition.
By 2007, this collaborative effort led to a plan to develop a seven-county behavioral health crisis intervention system. This new system would include a 24/7, professionally staffed call center, along with a resource database and encounter-based Emergency Response plan to be shared among providers. It also included three walk-in centers for behavioral health crisis response.
|
