It’s Time to Prioritize Our Mental Health in Colorado.

The pandemic triggered the essential role of mental health professionals. More Coloradans than ever are struggling with mental health issues. We are in a state of distress. ZEROGROUND appreciates and values the rich diversity of Colorado's five million residents and recognizes that Colorado's diverse population includes unique behavioral health needs.

Culturally competent services to all.

Colorado’s mental health field is struggling to find culturally competent behavioral health services to effectively meet the diverse needs. These needs cannot be denied; according to The Status of Mental Health Care in Colorado, The Colorado Trust, "One out of five people in Colorado need mental health services each year, yet fewer than a third of them receive care. The lack of care resulted in suicide, lost productivity, and homelessness, among other costs. Significant disparities exist in access to mental health care for racial, ethnic, and sexual minority groups, for people with disabilities, and for people living in rural areas of the state." Barriers involving community outreach, linguistics, a lack of training options, and a lack of resources have negatively impacted service delivery, client retention, and treatment outcomes for those individuals struggling to connect to culturally responsive agencies and treatment providers. Colorado ranked 51st in access to mental health services this year, and it’s time to acknowledge the need for cultural competence as key to providing effective service.

Course Description

This course is designed for 2 days of Theory and 2 Internships. This course will train mental health professionals on how to identify educational levels and cultural baggage. The trainees will learn how to identify their own values compared to other cultures and learn to be culturally neutral in deciding the most successful interventions. Learning to identify your own values will help you to understand when you are projecting your values onto your clients, resulting in referring them to inappropriate help and wasting resources. We will teach key words in mental health to assist in the treatment of the Hispanic population. Participants will come away better prepared to evaluate education and languages barriers limiting access to mental health services. These courses will offer a tool to empower trainees to close the cultural gaps.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Describe three cases and how to approach each culturally neutral.
• Identify at least four key words to approach bilingual/bicultural clients
• Identify at least 2 ways to identify educational levels.

Complete internships for mental health, case management, and medical providers therapy with Bilingual families.

Course Outline

1. My values or your values?
2. Education; the key factor in deciding the best intervention.
3. Communication skills key words.
4. Internships.
5. Tools and resources.