Access to Mental health Services: Social Justice for Persons with TBI

Funded by grants from the Health Services Research Administration, Colorado's TBI Program has sought to improve the systems of care for persons with TBI. Documented in a state-wide needs assessment, consumers, service providers and family members of persons with TBI reported great need for improved access to behavioral care. They have perceived public mental health services for persons with TBI to be limited due to regulations regarding eligibility for mental health services and concerns about current clinical skills to successfully treat persons with co-occurring mental illness and traumatic brain injury. Parity of access to behavioral health care for all Coloradans is a matter of social justice and has become a focus of Colorado's TBI Program. This paper documents the problem of limited access to behavioral health care for persons with TBI. Secondly, clinical profiles of persons with TBI who have accessed public mental health services will be presented. These findings using Colorado Client Assessment Record data indicate both greater initial mental health need among the TBI clients and equally improved clinical outcomes for persons with TBI compared with other public mental health clients. Given this evidence of potential benefit of mental health care for persons with TBI, state and local level efforts to increase access to mental health care are described as the outcome of these empirical analyses.