By Bill Henricks, CEO of AllHealth Network
Historically, nearly all behavioral health care occurred in the clinical offices of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and master prepared therapists (Alcoholics Anonymous, formed in 1935, was a notable exception). Gratefully, changing needs and improving technologies drove innovations in care to make behavioral health services more available where and when they are needed in the community.
In 1956, Dr. Joyce Brothers was one of the first mental health practitioners to make behavioral health services more generally available to the public by offering psychological advice live on TV and radio. Media psychology, as it was later called, was especially popular in the mid-1980’s when Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Dr. Toni Grant, Dr. Irene Kassorala and others joined Dr. Brothers on the air waves to help callers with concerns about sex, parenting, mental health or other personal issues. These shows were highly controversial at the time. Purists felt that advice on psychological matters should be reserved for the privacy of the therapy office and only in the context of a “therapeutic relationship.” Others felt that the popularization of these shows led to greater acceptance of behavioral health treatment and destigmatized the process of therapy.
As media psychology was developing between the 1950’s and into the 1980’s, treatment reform was also occurring in mental health. The intention of the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 was to close psychiatric hospitals and replace them with a national network of outpatient behavioral health clinics. The truth is that not nearly enough outpatient facilities were created, and they were never adequately funded. So, without a place to stay and without behavioral health services to support them, many individuals with severe and persistent mental illness became desperate and homeless. Eventually many of these people encountered difficulty with law enforcement. For the first time, in the early 1980’s, the country had more prison beds than psychiatric hospital beds. Many people who had received care in state psychiatric hospitals were ultimately housed in state prisons. This movement from hospitals to prisons, a process called ‘transinstitutionalization,” continues today.
With fewer psychiatric hospital beds available, there was a tremendous increase in encounters between law enforcement and individuals with mental illness. In some instances, these encounters resulted in tragedy and the death of individuals suffering from severe mental illness. As a result, cities like Memphis and Milwaukee created innovative co-responder programs – that paired mental health workers with local police on community interventions.
In 2025, the demand for behavioral health interventions in the community is higher than ever and so is the diversity of the community-based services AllHealth Network offers. In addition to police co-responder programs in four municipalities, AllHealth Network also offers behavioral health services in 41 schools, the Douglas County Jail, a mobile outreach van, and specialized clinical teams providing wraparound community based services to adolescents and adults struggling with severe mental illness, substance misuse and homelessness.
We know much more needs to be done. Hospital emergency rooms, schools, health and human service agencies, the courts, and especially the law enforcement community needs more support. We believe technology, increased interagency coordination, and innovative programs are needed to ensure behavioral health care is available in the community where and when it is needed most. At AllHealth Network, we are committed to pushing the future of behavioral health forward – one relationship, one innovation, and one community at a time to offer Coloradans the behavioral health services they need and deserve.