After working as a victim advocate, Kayla Gilmore realized she wanted to do something more proactive to improve mental health care in her community.
Her own experiences with depression and complex post-traumatic stress disorder led Gilmore to look for different ways to support people with mental health conditions in Longmont.
“What I wanted to do after COVID was start helping before bad things happened, instead of after,” Gilmore said.
She struggled firsthand to find the right mental health care because of stigma and discrimination, the ongoing mental health care worker shortage and the difficulty of finding quality mental health care within insurance coverage. From those experiences was born SunShineBlu.
A nonprofit that supports, encourages and advocates for people with mental health conditions, SunShineBlu was founded in April of 2022 and opened in October at 1241 Kimbark St, Unit C, in Longmont.
SunShineBlu offers opportunities for financial freedom for people experiencing mental illness by selling products made by or for people with mental health conditions. It also has the SunShine Room, which offers light therapy for people with seasonal affective disorder, depression and anxiety. The room has a meditation space, color therapy, soothing water fountains and calming music and exercises available at no cost.
“I truly believe that people with mental health conditions need a safe place of rest and beauty to heal,” Gilmore said. “That’s what our SunShine Room is, a calming place for people to just relax and breathe and mostly importantly, be known, accepted and loved for who they are, exactly as they are."
Gilmore emphasized that SunShineBlu is not a clinical setting, instead it aims to be the support space for people outside of their therapy settings.
“Clinical mental health care is absolutely 100% needed and we refer people to those places … but that’s not what we do here. Treatment isn't always available or accessible to everyone. Even when it is, it's often not enough for people who are really struggling. We offer additional services outside the traditional four walls of treatment and can provide needed support that people simply cannot receive within a clinical setting," she said.
Gilmore believes that addressing the mental health crisis will take community-based healthcare, as there are currently not the resources to help everyone as the system is set up. The approach at SunShineBlu aims to be a solution by meeting people where they are.
“It's not just one thing that’s going to fix it. We have to work together as a community to address it,” she said
