Pledging to tackle a statewide crisis in youth suicides, Colorado Attorney General Cynthia H. Coffman on Tuesday announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration with hospitals and nonprofit organizations to increase access to pediatric mental health treatment.
The Attorney General’s Office will provide a $2.8 million grant to support Partners for Children’s Mental Health, a program led by Children’s Hospital Colorado that brings together nonprofits, pediatric experts, government agencies and partners across the state.
“Bold action is needed to save lives and get mental health treatment to Colorado’s children,” Coffman said in a news release. “It isn’t a lack of caring that’s at issue, it is an unconscionable lack of resources devoted to the mental health of children.”
Suicide is the leading cause of death in Colorado for ages 10 to 24, and the state has the ninth highest suicide rate in the country.
Coffman said her office started looking with concern at this issue as the number of suicides and self-harm reports went up “astronomically” over the past few years.
“We thought we needed to do more to get upstream of the problem,” she said in an interview.
Part of the problem is that Colorado “does not have a functional statewide pediatric mental health system,” said Shannon Van Deman, vice president of the Pediatric Mental Health Institute and executive director of Partners for Children’s Mental Health.
“Our mental health system varies drastically by location,” Van Deman said. “Kids, depending on where they live, can have very different experiences.”
Every facility and provider works independently, and there has been no statewide support for care coordination. This is confusing for families who try to navigate the “system”. Some never break through the barriers.
“Our kids are suffering because of the existing barriers to care,” Van Deman said.
And the kids who need help the most often aren’t getting it.
An estimated 226,000 kids and teens in Colorado have diagnosable mental health conditions, yet only 21 percent receive professional care, according to Children’s Hospital. Colorado ranks 48th in the nation for the number of kids who need mental health services but cannot access them.
Van Deman said the goal is to move Colorado into the top 10 in the next 10 years.
A stark indication of this crisis came in late August when 9-year-old Jamel Myles died by suicide after being bullied for coming out as gay, his mother said.
“I think this case raised awareness and conveyed to a lot of people the drastic situation we’re dealing with,” Coffman said. “I don’t think most of us realized that kids as young as 9 and 10 know what to do or are in a position in their lives to take that action.”
The rise in youth suicides has been noticed at Children’s Hospital, where the number of patients coming into its pediatric intensive care unit for suicidal behaviors has jumped 600 percent in the past nine years.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, this grant money will support the following initiatives:
- Complete a children’s mental health service array assessment in Colorado to identify what services are available and where kids are falling through the cracks
- Pilot the implementation of an evidence-based practice model in rural Colorado to improve the quality of care for kids no matter where they are
- Implementation of the School Mental Health Toolkit
- Create a Zero Suicide pediatric care pathway for primary care physicians and begin holding training academies for 130 Colorado pediatric practices representing 700 pediatric physicians
- Develop trauma-informed care training modules and begin delivering the training modules across Colorado
- Create an assessment to identify which level of care coordination would be most beneficial to youth and families
The Attorney General’s Office already runs the Safe2Tell program, an anonymous way for students, parents, school staff and community members to report concerns regarding their safety or the safety of others. Since 2011, suicide has been the No. 1 most reported concern to Safe2Tell.
