Exemplary rural mental health services delivery

Southeast Mental Health Services, in rural Colorado, has successfully transitioned from a traditional model of maintenance and control to one focused on recovery and community integration. They moved from delivering day treatment, congregate living, assertive community treatment and no-choice therapy to providing individuals with choice of goals and the supports needed to achieve and maintain their goals. As a result, consumers are now living independently. Currently, 38 percent of those with serious and persistent mental illness are working, going to school or volunteering. The keys to this transition have been peer support networks, home healthcare aides, field case management and a crisis hostel with no threshold of symptoms for its use. Southeast Mental Health Services has achieved results and is a national example of the "transformation" called for in the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health report.