Whether they are navigating stress, relationship challenges, major life transitions or other behavioral health challenges, more Estes Valley residents now have access to support through UCHealth’s recently expanded integrated behavioral health program.

Through this program, behavioral health providers join primary care clinic teams as an additional resource to meet patients’ emotional and behavioral health needs. This integrated care model provides patients with quick and easy access to a therapist and other resources through their trusted primary care provider.

“Our overall mission from a behavioral health access perspective has been to remove barriers to care,” said Elicia Bunch, UCHealth’s vice president of behavioral health. “That means not only making behavioral health services more available, but also breaking down the stigma often attached to mental health symptoms and ensuring that they are treated as an essential part of medical care.”

Since 2020, UCHealth has been adding behavioral health clinicians to its primary care clinics across the state, and those services are now available to patients receiving primary care services (pediatrics, family medicine or internal medicine) at UCHealth Estes Valley Medical Center, 555 Prospect Ave. The program already was available to patients at UCHealth Primary Care, 131 Stanley Ave.

For patients at Estes Valley Medical Center, Anna Sihon, will be providing care. She’s a licensed clinical social worker with more than 25 years of experience.

Sihon helps patients of all ages navigate life’s challenges, build resilience and improve their overall well-being. She works with patients with a wide array of concerns, from anxiety, stress and sleep problems to relationship struggles, life transitions and executive functioning. She also can connect patients with additional resources, including virtual support groups and psychiatric care when needed.

“I really love how this program makes behavioral health an everybody thing,” Sihon said, noting that she helps patients with concerns ranging from serious mental health conditions to what she refers to as “life in general” challenges.

For some patients, support may involve talk therapy and learning new coping skills. For others, it may include medication management, a support group, a referral to a psychiatrist or a combination of services tailored to their needs.

“Finding the resources you need in mountain towns and rural communities can be hard on your own,” Sihon said. “We have a big team, so if I am not the right fit, I can find the right fit for the patient.”

Dr. Megan Ross, a pediatrician at the primary care clinic at Estes Valley Medical Center, said patients should know that talking with their UCHealth primary care provider can be the first step toward getting help.

“Mental health is so important. Just as you would seek care for sinusitis or asthma, seeking care for mental health concerns should be just as easy and accessible,” Ross said. “For that to happen, we need to talk about it a lot more, and we need to constantly battle the stigma that has so long been associated with mental health.”

Ross said this program is one example of how providers at Estes Valley Medical Center can provide the community with more resources through its affiliation with UCHealth.

“One of the most tremendous benefits of our partnership with UCHealth was difficult to obtain as a free-standing critical access hospital,” Ross said. “Being enmeshed in the UCHealth community has enabled our providers, and by extension our community, to have better access and continuing education on topics, mental health being one example.”

The collaboration benefits patients and providers alike, Ross said.

“The ability for the therapist to touch base several times throughout the week to check in on a patient who is struggling can be an effective way to help the patient in a time when reaching out for help can be challenging,” Ross said, adding that she already has learned so much from consulting with UCHealth’s integrated behavioral health experts. “This model does more than treat the patient in front of us. It gives us the tools to take better care of our future patients as well.”

In addition to the integrated behavioral health program, UCHealth conducts suicide risk screening and crisis assessments and offers virtual behavioral health support groups, virtual intensive outpatient therapy, outpatient psychiatric services, interventional behavioral health treatments, residential addiction treatment and inpatient behavioral health care. Get more information about UCHealth’s behavioral health services.