When you’re raised by a social worker and a prosecutor, you hear a lot about mental health.

My mother spent her first year in graduate school performing social work at a state mental institution. Her father, a psychiatrist, conducted evaluations at the same facility. But eventually that hospital, like many others around the country, was shut down.

What was supposed to happen to the patients who were “deinstitutionalized”? In theory, they would find care in community settings. In reality, many ended up on the streets.

Some found themselves in trouble with the law, which landed them in front of my father (he had left the prosecutor’s office to become a judge). I remember sitting in Dad’s courtroom, watching him don a stern black robe and take his seat behind an imposing wooden bench. I wonder now whether any of the defendants he sentenced might once have been Mom’s clients.

Years later, I was elected to the Colorado Legislature. I signed up for the health and welfare committee, in honor of my mother, and the judiciary committee, in honor of my father. I learned how much our failure to address problems upfront can cost us in the long run.

The same lesson guides our work at Mental Health Colorado, the organization I now lead. In mental health, as in many fields, prevention and early intervention are far less expensive than the alternatives.

Consider the facts:

– More than 1 million Coloradans experience a mental health or substance-use disorder each year, yet only 40 percent receive treatment.

– Our state ranks near last in the nation in the number of psychiatric beds per capita.

– One of the largest providers of mental health care is the Colorado Department of Corrections.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can change course — and we are.

The law now makes mental health care an essential benefit, prohibits discrimination in the treatment of mental illness, and requires insurers to maintain an adequate network of providers. Colorado has created a statewide crisis response system. Coloradans can talk to a trained mental health professional via telephone (844-493-8255) or text (“TALK” to 38255) seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

That progress has resulted in part from the persistence of Mental Health Colorado and our partners. But we have far more work to do: to curb the cost and expand the supply of services; to promote the screening and early detection of mental health disorders, especially among children and adolescents; and to ensure that the laws we helped pass are properly implemented and enforced.

Mental Health Colorado is taking action on several fronts:

1) We’re working to improve private health insurance coverage. We’re advising the state Division of Insurance on new rules governing network adequacy. The goal: to reduce the amount of time Coloradans have to wait and the distance they have to travel to find a mental health provider.

2) We’re steering mental health to the November ballot. Our $34 million proposal, which forms part of a tobacco tax package, would fund screening and services for Colorado’s children and adolescents.

3) We helped pass bipartisan legislation to create a statewide suicide prevention plan. The plan would train health care and criminal justice personnel to identify the early warning signs of suicide.

Mental Health Colorado played a key role in several other policy debates. One of the most difficult involved emergency “holds” — a process that allows individuals experiencing a mental health crisis to be detained for up to 72 hours. The problem: a shortage of therapeutic facilities, especially in rural communities, leaves many such individuals in jail. While the Legislature failed to produce a long-term solution, Mental Health Colorado is taking on that task in the months ahead.

Our work doesn’t end at the Capitol. We recently launched a “Conversation with Colorado” to identify the barriers to mental health care in individual communities. We’re building a network of advocates to help us break through those barriers. And we’re redoubling our efforts to educate the public, the press, and policymakers — and to strip away the stigma that still shrouds mental illness in silence and shame.

Together, we can make Colorado a national leader in mental health. Join us at mentalhealthcolorado.org.