Four Denver-based foundations, responding to a comprehensive study of Colorado's mental health system, have committed $4,125,000 to a five-year project to better meet the needs of Coloradans with severe mental illnesses.

Advancing Colorado's Mental Health Care is a joint project of the Caring for Colorado Foundation, the Colorado Trust, the Denver Foundation, and HealthONE Alliance. Its work was defined by the 2003 report The Status of Mental Health Care in Colorado (highlights, 6 pages, PDF; entire document, 311 pages, PDF), which detailed the dire situation of Colorado's mental-health-care system, noting that only one-third of those who need treatment receive it, that costs continue to rise as state expenditures decrease, and that care is often inaccessible and inadequate.

The focus of the joint project is to help improve the coordination of mental health services for patients. Today, when a patient with a mental-health diagnosis receives care, services may come from many independent sources such as human services, criminal justice, the school system, a primary care doctor, and community mental health services. Often this "non-integrated" care results in poor mental health outcomes for the patient and frustration for family members and caregivers. The project will support the integration of mental health services in up to ten Colorado communities so that persons with mental illness can be treated across agencies, regardless of funding sources, organizational structures, or policy and practice differences.

A search is underway for a project coordinator, and in spring 2005, proposals will be sought from human services and mental health organizations interested in improving the mental-health-care system within their communities.