Mental Health Partners praise Bipartisan Safer Communities Act

The co-CEOs of the behavioral health centers serving Boulder and Broomfield counties went to the White House on Monday to commemorate the signing of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Mental Health Partners' co-CEOs Jennifer Leosz and Dixie Casford were invited to the ceremony where President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris remarked on the passage of the most significant U.S. gun safety legislation in three decades.

The Safer Communities Act was signed into law June 25. It expands background checks for individuals under 21 purchasing firearms, prevents people convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor or felony in dating relationships from purchasing firearms for five years, provides $11 billion for mental health services, supplies $2 billion for community-based violence prevention initiatives and funds $750 million for state grants to implement crisis intervention order programs, known as red-flag laws.

Mental Health Partners in a nonprofit mental health clinic with locations in Longmont, Broomfield, Boulder and Lafayette. The group also has managed the multi-agency resource hub, the Boulder Strong Resource Center, in the aftermath of the King Soopers Table Mesa mass shooting that killed 10 people, a major reason why Mental Health Partners was invited to this event.

“It’s really impacted our entire organization because this kind of collective trauma that’s happened in our community has weaved into different mental health, behavioral health and substance use issues across our counties,” said Kristina Hernández Schostak, public information officer for Mental Health Partners.

The bill has a special focus on certified Community Behavioral Health Centers, of which Mental Health Partners was the first to be designated in Colorado. Biden highlighted the importance of funding mental health services for survivors of gun violence, as the Boulder Strong Resource Center has done in the 16 months since the tragedy.

“This law also provides funding vital … to address the youth mental health crisis in this country including the trauma experienced by the survivors of gun violence,” Biden said during his speech.

Hernández Schostak said it was meaningful to the entire nonprofit to be able to attend the commemoration.

“It’s really sobering and heart wrenching why we needed this type of legislation, why we continue to need more of this type of legislation, but I think it was a powerful moment for the staff at Mental Health Partners to be able to stand there to represent the victims and the fact that the work we’re doing here in Colorado is being recognized and represented all the way to the nation’s Capital,” she said.

Hernández Schostak emphasized that while not every mass shooting is rooted in mental illness, more resources for prevention, education, domestic violence prevention and other issues can help address these issues sooner.

“Allocating more funds and allocating more of our ability to be able to respond, and to prevent and to educate, and to come alongside some of our members of the community that need support when they’re in crisis or support when they’re having mental health issues, really impacts what we do every day,” she said.

During his speech, the president added that more work is needed to address gun violence in America.

“It will not save every life from the epidemic of gun violence, but if this law had been in place years ago, even this last year, lives would have been saved,” Biden said. “It matters. It matters. But it’s not enough, and we all know that.”

Mental Health Partners expressed hope that this law is a step in the right direction to better address mental health needs and gun violence.

“I really feel like it marks some change and that our government is recognizing that we need to do something and recognizing that we need to do something up front,” Hernández Schostak said.