Mental Health Treatment Center Opens in the Vail Valley, Where Suicide Is a Leading Cause of Death
In the last week of 2024, six residents suffering a mental health crisis in the Eagle River Valley had to be transported to metro Denver for treatment.
“The need is here. That just shows how great it would be for us to have this for our community,” said Chris Lindley, who has led a nearly five-year effort to improve mental health in Colorado’s high country. Lindley, officially the chief population health officer for Vail Health’s behavior health mission, is showing off a new inpatient mental health crisis center in the middle of a valley where suicide ranks among the leading causes of death. Watch a tour of the new facility in the video above.
The 28-bed Precourt Healing Center is the culmination of a nearly $200 million community effort to deliver mental health services to struggling residents. The facility was built specifically for psychiatric care, a break from the traditional model, which typically involves making minor tweaks to an existing physical care hospital. Precourt Healing Center is part of a mental health campus, with outpatient care and a host of services that not only help people weather a crisis but set them on a new path toward physical and mental stability.
That continuation of mental health care “is a huge problem we have today and it’s a problem all over the country,” Lindley said, describing how people can get stabilized at a psychiatric facility but then they are sent home without much follow-up. “We are going to be with them from the day they walk out of here. It’s actually the most dangerous time for anybody, those days after discharge. That’s when the most completed suicides actually happen.”
Breaking the mold of dated — and not always successful — mental health care begins in the 48,000-square-foot Precourt Healing Center. There are 28 rooms, 14 for adults on one floor and 14 for adolescents on another.
