Mental Health in the Mountains: Eagle County Opens Western Colorado’s First Psychiatric Beds
The biggest catalyst for change regarding mental health in the mountains was the nonprofit Vail Health, launching a $60 million campaign to fill the gap in behavioral health and substance abuse services that saw people in critical need held either in the local jail or treated in the emergency room until they could be transported more than two hours away for psychiatric services in either Grand Junction or Denver.
All of that changed on May 5 with the opening of Vail Health’s Precourt Healing Center in Edwards, funded in part by $12 million from that 2019 campaign. With 28 beds, 14 for adults and 14 for adolescents ages 12 to 17, the new facility is intended for stays of no more than a week but ideally just three to five days.
“These are the only psychiatric beds in all of western Colorado, actually, between here and Salt Lake City. This is it,” said Chris Lindley, executive director of Vail Health Behavioral Health, a nonprofit formed in 2019 and former director of Eagle County Public Health and Environment.
“We’re going to serve as many people as we can, but our model also is we only want to serve them once,” Lindley said. “Our objective is, upon discharge, our team is going to stay with them and continue to work with them, whether they’re in this community or not, through telehealth and different supports, and we don’t want them to come back and visit us. We hope that this is a one-and-done, and then they’re on the right track going forward.”
“We understand the significant stress that can impact our community, particularly among our Spanish-speaking members,” Vail Health Director of Inpatient Behavioral Health Teresa Haynes wrote in an email statement. Haynes said the healing center has a team of bilingual caregivers, including three bilingual nurses, four behavioral health technicians, two intake specialists, and bilingual behavioral health providers. The goal is to have at least one qualified, Spanish-speaking staff member on call at all times.
