[This is the full version of an article which appeared in condensed form in the Spring, 2023 edition of the Western Colorado Alliance publication, The Clarion. This article discusses the topic of suicide at some length. If you, or someone you know, is struggling with thoughts of suicide, please call the National Hotline at 988.]

It’s been a wild week for West Slope Youth Voice (WSYV) students, who just finished meeting with a variety of Democratic and Republican lawmakers and Governor Jared Polis as part of their first 2023 Lobby Days event, and in which some WSYV students made media appearances in support of a health care clinic at a Grand Junction high school.

It had already been an active 2022-2023 cycle so far, with WSYV students registering and pre-registering several hundred of their fellow students to vote, conducting classroom presentations, meeting with stakeholders and youth interest groups, and issuing student surveys to their peers to determine what needs are most pressing to address. While our complete survey results are still being collected and compiled, a key issue has yet again risen to the top; access to youth mental and physical health care. This has consistently been a priority for the students, and it has been for a reason. 

Youth mental healthcare has been woefully inadequate across the state, resulting in some of the highest rates of youth suicide anywhere in the country. This has been a problem for decades and is most prominent in rural parts of the state including the Western Slope. One issue further exacerbating the high suicide rates is that access to mental health care is hard to come by, with many communities unable to find open beds for crisis care, unable to afford the care they can find, battling with social stigmas associated with our “Wild West” mentality of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, an inability to find a good therapist or psychiatrist locally, and even in many communities where they simply do not have a care center for mental health problems period. These issues, combined with increased use of social media, have led to a deadly combination of circumstances that are fueling one of the top 5 leading causes of death of young people — suicide. 

For years our students at WSYV have championed this issue and we have made significant gains, from House Bill 19-1120 (Youth Mental Health Education and Suicide Prevention) which requires the Dept. of Education to consult with the office of suicide prevention, the youth advisory council, and the suicide prevention commission to create a resource bank for mental health education literacy, to Senate Bill 20-014 (Excused Absences in Public Schools for Behavioral Health) that allows students to take up to five excused absences a year due to mental and behavioral health concerns which previously would have counted towards an unexcused absence, hurting their attendance records and disincentivizing seeking the mental health care they need. In the 2021 session, the Colorado State Legislature passed House Bill 21-1258 (Rapid Mental Health Response for Colorado Youth) which established the I Matter program that provides access to mental health and substance use disorder services for youth aged 18 and under or 21 and under if they receive special education services and allocated $9 million to cover the costs. That program has been very successful and provides up to six free therapy sessions for youth that are reimbursed to therapists through the Colorado Behavioral Health Administration. But there is still much to be done, as the I Matter program is mainly an online service that students access through tablets and computers and misses some of the human element, and lacks a screening program meaning only students who seek the care have access.

One bill set to be voted on in 2023 that our students plan to lobby for is House Bill 23-1003 (School Mental Health Assessment), which would create a system for yearly, voluntary mental health assessments for students in sixth grade up to seniors in high school. These assessments would be conducted through the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) and would only take place in schools that opt into the program. Schools that do choose to participate would be required to issue a written notice to parents within the first two weeks of school starting so parents can make the decision if they wish for their child to be evaluated for mental and/or behavioral health issues. Although parental consent is preferred, Colorado state law gives children aged 12 and up the right to consent to assessments and health care on their own. This bill has come under some scrutiny for the fact that parental consent is not required; however, this has been Colorado law for several years now and this bill does nothing new in regard of parental consent. Our students feel strongly that this bill will help to close the gap in access and give students the ability to seek the help they need when they need it.

Local Healthcare Efforts

More locally, the school board of School District 51 (SD51) has recently taken up the topic of school-based health care as the plans for the new Grand Junction High School (GJHS) are being hammered out. Within the existing building plans for the school are several thousand square feet set aside for a school-based health center, much like what we already have in Central High School with its highly successful Warrior Wellness Center. The program at Central is a partnership between the school and Marillac Clinic, just like what is proposed at the new GJHS, and has been in place since the start of the school year 2020. The program has since provided nearly 5,000 medical, dental, mental, and behavioral health services to over 2,000 students including over 1,000 depression screenings. This is of particular importance in a school district like SD51, where there are many students living in poverty and a higher than average number of students eligible for Medicaid and Child Health Plan Plus who otherwise may not have any access to health care services. 

The school board has expressed several concerns with approving this program for GJHS, mostly over the lack of parental consent necessary to receive services which is more a problem with existing Colorado law as detailed earlier, as well as the fact that accessing services through the school-based health care system in the summer months may not be possible, however, this is something that would be determined by a planning committee the school board would later create. 

The students of WSYV stand in support of approving the GJHS school-based health clinic, as the concerns are far outweighed by the community benefits the program would offer. Several of our students have interacted with Central’s Warrior Wellness program or have peers who have taken advantage of the health care offered, and to them, it has become an indispensable part of the school. Schools already often exist as centers for the community to gather, adding a community benefit such as access to affordable and readily available health care in an environment where the students spend the majority of their time is a positive for the students and their families and has been proven to help alleviate some of the greater mental, behavioral, and physical health issues facing us here on the Western Slope. 

As the students recover from their recently completed first Lobby Days event, defending access to mental and physical health care for their peers will be at the top of their minds. The students are looking forward to meeting with the sponsors of House Bill 23-1003 and urging its passage, as well as having continued conversations about the need for expanded funding for school-based health care programs like we have the opportunity to obtain in Mesa County.