Colorado Recovery: A One-stop Shop to Move Forward!

At Colorado Recovery, clients learn how to live successfully with their mental illness in an atmosphere of caring support.

Here at Colorado Recovery caring support looks like an experienced, educated staff, and a treatment model of inclusion in which our clients are active participants in their ongoing care and treatment teams. With the outpatient Supportive Transitional Living and psychiatric rehabilitation services available through our program, we focus on client’s finding meaningful work and developing the ability to live independently in the community. Individualized outpatient treatment modalities support clients who have achieved stability to integrate within the community.

“We are here to help our clients move forward and achieve their goals,” says clinical therapist Julie Owen, MA, LPC. “We provide the stabilizing medications, skills and resources they need to manage their illness successfully.”

One-stop Shop

The team at Colorado Recovery offers a wide variety of services including vocational counseling and life skill coaching. We can help clients with motivation and setting up routines.

“We believe that we have the opportunity to offer a variety of necessary services to help our clients move towards independence. These services not only include case management and vocational services, but we offer health management with our on staff nursing, so we can administer medications if needed,” explains executive director Terry Stiven, MA, LPC. “We can give injections if needed, we can set up the labs, we can make sure that labs are done. As a team, we can help provide all of that.”

It’s not easy for people with serious mental health conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder to find a place that provides a vocational counselor, a case manager, individual and group therapy, and other services in a single facility.

“You may not need a case manager every day but if something comes up with insurance or Medicaid or Social Security disability payments, we have the staff who can help with that,” says Stiven. “The team can also help with grocery shopping or setting up medical appointments, sometimes even accompanying them to a doctor’s appointment.”

Colorado Recovery clients are usually comfortable here. “It’s nice that they can get almost everything they need at Colorado Recovery, rather than coming here for therapy and then having to go to a hospital for their injection,” says Owen. “Here they encounter familiar faces. It’s easy for them to talk with us and they can do the whole range of requirements in one place.”

Client Choice

Colorado Recovery offers clients choices. “You don’t have to go to all our groups, you can decide whether you want a social-connection type group one day or acceptance and commitment therapy, or maybe just join in for a meal in the evening,” Stiven explains. “And if there were an episode of instability we would know how to help and surround that person with more service options.”

In any given week, clients can decide what pieces they want to participate in, depending on their current situation. “Recently, we had a client who felt pretty isolated. He chose to come to several groups and is now in the transitional living program,” Owen says. “Other clients may decide to participate in our outdoors excursions.”

Making choices for themselves about their needs and how to best manage them is very empowering for people with mental illness.

“As part of the Warner model, we don’t dictate a lot of “have to’s”: telling them ‘you have to go to this, you have to show up for that.’ They have a say in their plan, an opportunity to think things through and make choices about their lives,” says Owen. “That’s very empowering. That’s a pretty strong piece of living independently which is our ultimate goal for them. They’re working on making decisions for themselves while they are with us, and as a result, they have the necessary skills as they move forward.”

Colorado Recovery offers outpatient care for people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other severe mental illnesses in a community-integrated treatment environment designed to meet those needs. We are also accepting admissions at the transitional living level for those who may have attended another program but are interested in support while living more independently.

Our mission is to help adults with serious mental health issues stabilize their illness, minimize symptoms, improve functioning, and enhance each person’s social inclusion, quality of life, and sense of meaning in life.

If you have questions about our recovery model or our services to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and similar mental illnesses, call us at 720-218-4068 to discuss treatment options for you or the person you would like to help.