An Interview with Andrew Romanoff – Mental Health America of Colorado

An Interview with Catherine Strode

The Work of Mental Health America of Colorado Is Personal for Andrew Romanoff

An Interview with Catherine Strode

Former four-term State Representative and two-term Speaker of the House, Andrew Romanoff, took over the helm this month of Mental Health America of Colorado (MHAC).  As its new president and CEO, Romanoff will steer MHAC’s efforts to make Colorado a leader nationally in addressing mental health disorders and its movement to end the stigma of mental illness.  In an interview with Catherine Strode, he explains how the battle against the stigma of mental illness has become a personal one for him, and, for his family.

Where do you draw your passion for mental health issues?

“When I was a kid, my Mom worked for the state mental hospital.  She was a social worker. After the wave of institutionalization hit the country and hospitals like hers were shut down, she ended up training mental health workers who took care of people who found themselves on the streets. The community support that the country needed didn’t materialize, so a lot of folks with brain diseases, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, found themselves homeless or in trouble with the law.  My Dad was a prosecutor and became a judge; so some of the same people my Mom was trying to help, wound up in his courtroom.  I’ve thought about that a lot over the years.  I thought, what kind of a society condemns people with mental illness to a life like that on the street, or under an over pass, or living in a car? Or sentences them, condemns them, to an early grave.  Can a country like ours call itself civilized? I thought there must be a better way to go.”

 Do you have a record of championing these issues?

“When I got to the Statehouse, I signed up for two committees: the Health and Welfare Committee, in honor of my Mom, and the Criminal Justice and Judiciary Committee, in honor of my Dad.  I think if you just spent a week with me on those two committees at the Capitol, you could probably see how our failure as a state to prevent problems up front can really come back to bite us in the budget on the back end. We see what happens when we shortchange these investments.  For example, when we turn the Department of Corrections into the chief source of support for mental health and drug and alcohol treatment.  That can’t be the cheapest way to go.  It’s actually the most expensive path we could pick. Those are all issues that matter to me a lot as a policy maker and as a Coloradan.”

What mental health legislation are you proud of having sponsored in Colorado?

“I sponsored a number of pieces of legislation to provide more care for new moms who were suffering from drug or alcohol abuse.  I made Colorado join the rest of the nation in providing drug and alcohol treatment as a Medicaid benefit.  Democrats and Republicans teamed up on a bill I sponsored to provide swifter reenrollment for offenders who were leaving the criminal justice system.  We found people in the Department of Corrections who were Medicaid recipients when they were incarcerated because they were so disabled by their mental illness, but we terminated their help as a state when they were behind bars.  We found 80 per cent of them were reoffending within 12 months of release or parole. We thought if we put these guys back on treatment before they got out so there would be a more seamless transition. There are number of pieces of legislation we were able to pass to better address mental health and substance abuse disorders.”

Can you share your own personal story of how mental health has affected you?

“It struck home in a personal and painful way because I lost one of my closest relatives.  She was like a little sister to me.  My first cousin, Melissa, took her life on New Year’s Day. We had a wonderful time, spent the holidays together, and then as the three of us, her Mom and Dad and I were inside, she walked into the backyard and shot herself.  The tragic part is her depression went undetected, undiagnosed, and obviously, untreated.  We’ve spent the last four months as a family trying to figure out what we missed.  She seemed to have been so ashamed by her depression. The stigma that attaches to these disorders is so profound and so deadly, it has taken someone from my family and it turns out, from so many families.  My family’s story is not unique.  The real tragic irony is this disease, the mental illness Melissa must have been suffering from, is the only illness that could have killed her at the age of 35.  If she had had a lump in her breast, or suffered from another more traditionally understood physical illness, she would have had no qualms in the world about sharing that with us and she would have pursued a course of treatment.”

Catherine Strode is Advocacy Denver’s Communications and Policy Specialist.  She holds a Masters degree in Public Administration with an emphasis in Health Care Policy. Catherine publishes Policy Perspective, featuring interviews with state policy makers on issues that affect the work and mission of Advocacy Denver.