Suicide. It is a hard word to read and an even more shocking physical act. Yet our community and region has felt this loss intensely in the past year as our fellow community members, especially our youth, have left decades of life behind for various reasons we may never fully know. Life and death issues are among the most challenging in the public and political sphere to address. But we must.
It is an issue we hope to illuminate through the editorial pages, like today, through information contributed by local health care practitioners that can be of help for people who are struggling.
La Plata County has already experienced two suicide deaths this year. In 2016, there were 15 suicide deaths, almost double the eight suicide deaths of 2015.
The years 2015 and 2016 stand out because they include the deaths of two 13-year-olds. Montezuma County also saw the deaths of two adolescents by suicide in November.
We need to move beyond the stigma of mental health disorders (that include depression and anxiety) and create opportunities for people of all ages to gain access from an early age to affordable mental health care.
Just as doctors encourage their patients to seek an annual physical exam, why not a mental one?
Fortunately, Pediatric Partners of the Southwest and Axis Health System’s community health centers in Durango, Cortez (and Pagosa Springs in May) also offer behavioral health care (mental health and substance use treatment) to their patients. Axis-operated school-based health centers at Florida Mesa Elementary and Durango High Schools do too.
Axis’s community health centers are federally funded through the Affordable Care Act, and they and Pediatric Partners provide health care with Medicaid funding.
With all the talk, and last week’s action by both houses of Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it is important to know that mental health and substance use coverage the ACA provides may also be in jeopardy.
Even if mental health care provisions are retained in a future repeal, it is almost certain that reductions in Medicaid funding and subsidies under the ACA will make health insurance more expensive for the poor, and reduce the number who can afford coverage.
The effects of repeal of the ACA, which has led to record low numbers of uninsured residents locally, including many children, would be felt across Southwest Colorado.
It is among the reasons strict repeal, with no current replacement plan, amounts to cruel and unusual punishment for an already vulnerable population and is wrong.
