Real Stories: Mental Health
I want to start with a trigger warning for this email. I’m going to talk about mental health and pregnancy loss. If these topics are sensitive for you, feel free to skip this email, and know that I’m hard at work creating more access to affordable mental and behavioral healthcare.
Mental and behavioral health is in my blood. When I was growing up, my mom was a therapist and my dad was a pioneer in the field of integrating primary care and behavioral healthcare. In my 20s, I worked as a yoga therapist for folks recovering from trauma, and as I mentioned in my last email, I’ve spent many years mentoring and walking shoulder to shoulder with people navigating their mental health challenges, in the same way that I had incredible therapists, mentors and teachers walking with me as I navigated my own trauma and healing. When I started working in policy change and community advocacy, I was astounded by the scale of the need compared to the resources available and so I got to work creating more access and affordable options for people seeking help. I’m proud of all the bills I’ve worked on and helped pass that have created more access to mental health in Colorado. Check out the story from Marisa below to hear about one of those bills I’m especially proud of.
“A few years ago, with Kyra’s guidance and leadership, I worked on the passage of HB20-1086, which requires insurance companies to cover an annual mental health exam in the same way they cover an annual physical. As a first-generation American, I see the struggles my community faces every day and because of working with Kyra, I was able to help people who need it most, and create opportunities for everyone in Colorado to thrive.” - Marisa
On a more personal note, this has been a tough year for my family. In addition to some things that aren’t mine to share, I’ve had two ectopic pregnancies rupture that brought with them life-threatening emergency surgeries, an additional miscarriage, bouts of postpartum depression after those losses, and an incredible amount of change at home, for a variety of reasons. I have a high deductible insurance plan through my husband’s work, and although I’ve exceeded my deductible due to the surgeries mentioned above, our household out of pocket max hasn’t been met and so I’ve struggled to find a therapist that is affordable. And I am a white woman with a job and with insurance. I have incredible privilege and I can’t get affordable care.
This morning in a meeting with one of the clinics I’m working with on creating a better model for how we deliver health in this country, a provider mentioned that they ran out of grant funding that allowed them to pay for a culturally competent bilingual mental health provider. The population they serve are primarily Spanish speaking and they are the only mental health provider in their geographic region. I hear stories like this, and like mine, every day. And it doesn’t take much to see that we are living in a time that fosters mental health issues. Many of us live with a constant fear of gun violence, the experience of watching our rights be taken from us, the destruction of our environment, and deep economic struggles.
There is major work to do and although it’s heartbreaking to bear witness to (and experience) the struggles we’re facing and the barriers to wellness our systems create, I’m deeply grateful for decades of deep relationships with community that have intimately taught me about the struggles folks are facing, and the resilience and hope we have when we solve them together. I have a long track record of leading on and supporting the passage of major policies in our state that have created more access to affordable care. I’m working in communities across the state on building systems that are more equitable and meet people where they are. And I have the lived experience to deeply understand how vital it is that we address our community’s mental health. Most importantly though, I’ve trained hundreds of young folks, have facilitated countless roundtable sessions and have been organizing in communities across our state for years, and what I know from that work is:
Because we’re working together, we are making progress.
We are building resilience.
We are building power.
And we can make Colorado a place where people who need help, get it.
We just need to elect the right people.