Opinion: Colorado Lawmakers Must Decide Whether to Help Children in Acute Mental Health Crisis

In recent years, Colorado has contended with a shocking increase in the number of youth under age 21 experiencing depression and thoughts of self-harm, with the state’s emergency rooms reporting a staggering 158 percent increase in visits by young people between 2016 and 2021. Equally devastating is that suicide is the leading cause of death for youth in Colorado. Sadly, gaps in our mental health care system are leading to more children in crisis — and families relying on costly emergency room visits as their only option. Compounding the problem, once discharged, youth often have little to turn to for ongoing assistance.

Legislation that would invest in the state’s mental health crisis system, HB24-1019, offers a meaningful step toward closing this gap for high-need youth by offering services to children and teens in their homes. By bringing services to them, it will help them stay out of the ER, which is often not the appropriate place to get the care they need.

Sponsored by state representatives Judy Amabile and Mary Bradfield and state senators Rhonda Fields and Rod Pelton, this bill would fund crisis resolution team services designed to respond to youth under the age of 21 with acute behavioral needs. The program would deploy trained professionals to calm and support children and youth in crisis, offering four to six weeks of continued services — including counseling, case management and family support — that have been proven to have a long-term positive impact.

Similar in-home and community-based interventions have helped other states prevent over 90 percent of children and teens they serve from going to the ER or being hospitalized. This is obviously beneficial to the families and youth who are getting the care and support they need. But it is also a clear benefit to taxpayers who bear the cost of an increasing number of preventable hospital visits, many of which are from uninsured Coloradans or those enrolled in Medicaid, which drives billions of dollars in state spending every year.

Colorado’s Medicaid program recently settled a class action lawsuit that grew out of the lack of appropriate care to help children with high behavioral health needs. The lawsuit alleged that too many children are institutionalized in hospitals and residential facilities. Few get follow-up care.

It is evident that crisis services like those proposed under HB24-1019 would significantly address the allegations put forward in the lawsuit that many children with acute behavioral disorders wind up in a cycle of institutionalization without hope for evidence-based help. This legislation, if enacted, would show the U.S. District Court overseeing the settlement that Colorado is committed to providing children the care they need and deserve.

Despite the benefits of HB24-1019, it faces an uncertain future as Colorado’s lawmakers make spending decisions. Elected officials must now decide whether to invest in crisis services that close a hazardous gap for children in our health-care system or accept the status quo, with the possibility that even more children and youth will suffer without the care and support they desperately need.

An investment in the short term will create savings for the future by reducing emergency department visit costs and hospital admissions. But this isn’t about the money. Mental health services, especially for youth, are a priority for Colorado’s voters. Services like those proposed under HB24-1019 are not simply a “nice to have” — they are essential to ensuring the mental well being of Colorado’s youth.

Denver resident Jake Swanton is vice president of State Affairs at Inseparable, a national nonprofit working to make mental health care accessible to all by closing the treatment gap, improving crisis response, and championing evidence-based interventions for youth.

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