May is Mental Health Awareness Month and in recognition of the month, the Ardent Grove Foundation is planning to host a spring fundraising event to help pay for the expansion of its mental health clinic.
“There's just a lot of barriers to access that have already existed, but more and more, we find that those are impacting people who are most in need to begin with,” Emily Markley, Ardent Grove Foundation executive director and licensed clinical psychologist said. “One of the more pervasive clinical concerns that we're seeing in the community have to do with overwhelm, anxiety, depression and kind of that pervasive sense of isolation and things like hopelessness.”
▶️ Denver7's Micah Smith talked with Markley about barriers to mental health access and more
Ardent Grove Foundation is a Denver-based nonprofit mental health clinic, with a mission of keeping mental healthcare affordable and accessible.
But Markley said recent cuts to programs are creating challenges to providing services.
“There are widespread cuts to access, including, most notably, to Medicaid services, and that's come in the form of already reducing number of sessions, reducing reimbursement rates for clinicians already by 20%, and that directly affects Ardent Grove, because in 2025, 80% of our clients utilize the resource of Medicaid to access our services,” Markley said.
Markley said Ardent Grove’s clinic is seeing a direct impact.
“We do have the gift of our clinic offering a fee for service, and that does help fuel our organization, as I said, that's through Medicaid reimbursements," Markley said. "Those are clearly under threat. And then we also operate on a pay-what-you-can sliding scale for those who are uninsured or underinsured. Last year, we're really proud to say that that translated to an average session fee of $39 a session.”
The nonprofit is hosting is first-ever spring fundraiser called Blossoms of Joy on Saturday, May 9.
For additional mental health resources, call 988 to reach Colorado’s Mental Health Line or reach out to Colorado Crisis Services.
Denver7 is committed to making a difference in our community by standing up for what's right, listening, lending a helping hand and following through on promises. See that work in action, in the videos above.