Eagle County’s grassroots effort to address mental health crisis is central in new ‘Paradise Paradox’ film

A new film from ski racer Bode Miller and Emmy-award-winning filmmaker Brett Rapkin with Podium Pictures is delving into the mental and behavioral health challenges that disproportionately affect mountain communities.

Titled “Paradise Paradox,” the film explores the contradictory nature of mountain living: That while the mountains offer escape, adventure and beauty, communities are grappling with significant wealth gaps, high cost of living, higher rates of suicide, substance and alcohol abuse and other mental and behavioral health challenges.

The film in some ways is an extension of “The Weight of Gold,” which was directed by Rapkin, and explored mental health challenges with Olympians.

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“We discovered during production that something like 80% of Olympians suffer from Olympic depression,” Rapkin said. “Some of the athletes also felt like the resources provided by the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee were not sufficient. It was a story that needed to be told.”

“Bode had moved his family to Big Sky, Montana, in the last several years. We have been friends and collaborators for 20 years, and he was a major part of ‘The Weight of Gold.’ We started talking about doing another project that could be impactful and the statistics speak for themselves of the critical issue going on in our mountain towns.”

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Alterra Mountain Co. is a sponsor of the film alongside The Rieschel Foundation, The Dollinger Family, the John and Jacolyn Bucksbaum Family Foundation, the Lovell Foundation, Brad Feld and Amy Batchelor, The Borgen Family Foundation, Bode Miller, and Mikaela Shiffrin.

While the film explores communities across the West — including Mammoth to Winter Park — and how Alterra is addressing its employees’ mental health at its resorts, the majority of the film focuses on Eagle County. It delves into how this paradox has existed here and how local community members, nonprofits and entities are working to shift the paradigm entirely.

The movie takes viewers throughout the county — including stops at Endorphin and Color Coffee in Eagle Ranch, The Riverwalk in Edwards and Vail Village — but also through the steps Eagle County has taken to address mental and behavioral health in the valley.

In 2017, Eagle County’s mental health crisis peaked with 17 suicides. Concurrently, the county had the second lowest number of licensed providers per capita in the state. And Colorado was the 48th in the country. As Chris Lindley, Vail Health Behavioral Health’s executive director, puts it in the movie: “We were losing the race of losers.”

Focusing on solutions

However, although the film features community members discussing the highs and lows of mountain living, the film’s producers also wanted to focus on solutions.

“Bode and I felt that if we created something that was focused on solutions, maybe it could help move things in the right direction,” Rapkin said.

In Eagle County, Rapkin said they saw a community that “found a way to get organized, raise tremendous funding and build the things necessary to address the issue.”

“Imagine if every community in the country did the same thing,” he added.

The film follows the county’s grassroots efforts to address the mental health crisis.

This includes the stories behind the passage of 1A, which taxed retail marijuana sales and directed funds toward mental health; the 10-year, $60 million commitment from Vail Health’s board in 2019; the Precourt family donation to create an outpatient facility in the community; the creation and contributions of nonprofits like SpeakUp ReachOut, Your Hope Center and My Future Pathways; the creation of the 24/7 crisis line and co-response model; and the many ways the community came together.

“It requires everybody leaning in, removing a stigma, pooling precious resources, making sure commercial insurance companies are pulling their weight, so on and so forth,” said Will Cook, president and CEO of Vail Health. “At the end of the day, it’s really about awareness and removing stigma, trying to have people lean in together to figure out how we continue to solve this problem. That’s what matters the most to us as the film gets shown.”

As the movie begins screening across the country and world, Rapkin said the goal is that other communities “will come away from these events with at least one actionable idea to improve their community response to this crisis.”

Through sharing these solutions and the ways communities, individuals and organizations are working toward tackling the paradox, the main message in the film is one of hope.

“We’re not burying our heads in the sand and saying, this is a beautiful, wonderful, happy, happiest place ever. We see what’s happening. We feel what’s happening, and we’re responding to it,” said Dr. Teresa Haynes, the clinical director of Your Hope Center. “It doesn’t all happen overnight, but we continue to grow and increase our response to the challenges, which I think that in and of itself is hope.”

And what better way to spread this hope than through storytelling?

“Nothing is more powerful than storytelling,” Rapkin said.

The power of sharing

For a long time, stigma kept discussions around mental and behavioral health behind closed doors. However, in Eagle County, the shift toward destigmatizing these topics and addressing the mental health crisis kicked off when community members began sharing their stories.

Cook acknowledged that one of the first community members to share their story was Amanda Precourt.

“In my mind, (Precourt) sparked the discussion through telling her personal story,” Cook said. “Here’s this very successful person in a prominent family living in this valley …  and she put herself out there and told her story about her struggles that culminated in an attempted suicide. And that started a conversation amongst a lot of people — not just other patients who needed care — but Vail Health and the nonprofits.”

Precourt and her father, Jay Precourt, provided the initial contributions for the Precourt Healing Center, a 28-bed inpatient facility in Edwards. The facility is expected to open in 2025.

In this way, Cook said that storytelling “is so powerful, especially when you’re coming at a problem that for so many years had stigmas associated where people were ashamed to talk about it.”

Precourt shares her story in “Paradise Paradox.” In some scenes, Corey Lamothe, who serves as vice president of SpeakUp ReachOut’s board, sits and talks alongside Precourt. In the movie, Lamothe shares the story of her brother, whom she lost to suicide in 2014.

Lamothe said she wanted to participate in the film because “I will do as much as I can to continue spreading awareness around mental health and suicide prevention.”

“The heartache that my family experienced is not something any other family needs to go through. This film is groundbreaking in really addressing a taboo subject that we need to talk more about,” she added.

For her, storytelling is “one of the most important things we can do.”

“There isn’t any family or any person that I have ever come across that has not been touched by suicide, depression, addiction or any other mental health struggle,” Lamothe said. “The more we share our stories, the more we humanize what is actually happening and the more compassion we have for one another. Compassion leads to connection (and) connection leads to a variety of the factors needed to overcome mental health issues.”

And from sharing her own story, Lamothe said she hopes people see that “no one needs to suffer.”

“My brother’s story lives on to save other people’s lives. I wish we had the resources when he was alive that we do now. I hope people are able to understand that mental health is complex and it takes a community to really help those in need,” Lamothe said.

Gerry Lopez, the scholarship manager at My Future Pathways, moved to Eagle County from Mexico when he was 6. Through his work today with My Future Pathways, Lopez is working to provide the connection he didn’t have growing up in the county.

“When I went through my behavioral health issues, there weren’t many people talking about it and I felt weird talking about it. It doesn’t matter if you’re Latino, Black, white, Asian — I feel like in general men don’t really talk about it,” Lopez said. “I didn’t start thinking about behavioral health or what it was until it hit me.”

When he graduated from Eagle Valley and looked toward the future, Lopez felt a calling to start conversations — particularly with Latino males — and help close the gap he saw with behavioral health access and resources, he said.

“I think the biggest power is just to normalize talking about it, especially around men,” Lopez said. “The more that we talk about it in such a genuine way, the more that people kind of see people like myself and other people in the community talk about their issues, the more normalized it will be to talk about it.”

For him, working with the students at My Future Pathways, he hopes they see the courage it takes to raise their hand and ask for help. In the film, Lopez talks about a moment in his life where just telling somebody what he was going through changed his life. Now, he said he works to find kids who are struggling to “light up their world” and show them they’re not alone and that there’s a path forward.

“What I want everybody to know is that once you talk about it, it’s going to feel different. You’re going to feel like you’re going against the current. You’re going to go and take the road less traveled. But with patience and persistence and knowing that failure is part of the process, life will get better and better days are ahead,” Lopez said.

As the film begins to shift toward the steps taken in Eagle County, one story marks a critical turning point: the tragic loss of 13-year-old Olivia Ortega to suicide. Ortega’s mom, Vickie Zacher, shares their story in the film.

“I had tried to get her help previously, and I just ran into so many roadblocks,” Zacher said.

With a lack of resources in Eagle County at the time, Zacher had to travel down to Denver multiple times a week to get Ortega the care she needed. The care itself wasn’t covered by insurance and was expensive.

“I felt like there were no resources here at all for me or any help, and I just felt very alone with the whole situation,” Zacher said. “At that point, nobody was talking about mental health or anything like that so I felt like I had to keep it to myself. I couldn’t reach out to anybody. I felt like I was very alone.”

In 2020, Vail Health launched Olivia’s Fund to honor Ortega’s life. The fund covers up to six free sessions per year for Eagle County residents who qualify. In the film, Lindley states that as of today, no one has been denied from the fund.

“I have had multiple people that know me reach out when they qualify for Olivia’s fund and thank me and just say how much it means to them,” Zacher said. “That means the world to me to know that it helps somebody.”

In sharing her story in the film, Zacher hopes to provide someone with the support she didn’t have.

“I want there to be help for people and not to feel like they’re alone,” Zacher said. “My hope is by me speaking about my experience, if somebody else is experiencing something similar, that they know that there’s help for them and it’s not something that they should be ashamed of. And I hope they do everything in their power to get that individual the help they need because it can happen to anybody.”

With the film sharing this story with a broader audience, she hopes other communities start working to break down stigmas, build programs and help each other.

“I hope that even if it helps one person, then it’s worth it to me because it’s the worst thing you can ever go through,” Zacher said. “And I think Olivia is helping me do these things because I need to have something positive, to go on for Olivia, even though it’s hard. By helping people get the help that they need, it helps me, and I feel like Olivia would be proud of me.”

Bringing together many voices

In choosing what stories the film would tell, Rapkin said there was an effort to “choose a diverse group, because mental health challenges affect everyone, regardless of race, gender or income.”

From Eagle County, the film features numerous voices from nonprofits, athletes, local government, Vail Health and more.

The film draws a connection between significant wealth gaps and the prevalence of behavioral health issues. With a cost of living that is only increasing, the significant wealth of some full- and part-time residents as well as guests is in stark contrast to those working multiple jobs just to scrape by and live in the mountains.  

In the film, Magda King, Vail Health Behavioral Health board member and general manager of the Antlers at Vail, shares a story about a town meeting that she had attended many years ago. At the meeting, someone said, “‘The reason why we all are here is to play,'” she recalled.

“I said, ‘No, we aren’t — I mean, maybe you are here to play — we have to work three and four jobs just to make a living,'” King said.

“This may be a paradise for many people who can afford to live in a paradise-like environment. But for many of us, we are working two or three jobs to be able to afford that quality of life for our children, which is the paradox. Every sacrifice that we make — and I include myself in there — is to provide a better future for our kids,” King added. “And I don’t take that lightly.”

King has always worked to ensure that her employees are engaged in the community and are aware of the resources available to them. Over the years, this has included bringing in the police department to build trust and talk about immigration to sharing nonprofits that can help with challenges they are facing.

“My dream is that we stop talking about ‘them,’ about ‘they,’ about ‘this other group of people.’ We are all in the same valley. We all have a shared goal, which is a better living,” King said, adding that a “better living” for some might mean saving money for their kids’ college and for others skiing five days a week, but that everyone here is seeking something more.

“(Vail Health) Behavioral Health is making a huge impact in everybody because that’s the core message: Whatever it means to you, we’re there to help someone out,” King said. “I think Vail Health Behavioral Health is giving us a platform to level out the field. Everybody has problems, everybody has issues, everybody is vulnerable — and Vail Health Behavioral Health is making strides to make that easier for all of us.”

While King said she’s not one to seek out the spotlight, she felt a social responsibility to participate in the film to speak for those who might be afraid to.

“I feel that it’s my responsibility, not my obligation, but my social responsibility, to say, ‘Hey, there is these other groups of people that we work crazy because we have a dream which is to improve our life comparing to where we came from,” King said. “All of us make a community.”

“I feel like in prior years, Vail Health wasn’t seen as a resource for the Latino community, and it was kind of seen as a place only the rich people go. But now, with all these different initiatives that are happening, it’s giving a lot more people the voice that we deserve,” Lopez said.

In the film, Lopez talks about the Machismo culture in Latino families.

“It’s that buckle your belts, put your shoes on and just go throughout the day, not really talking about it,” he said in an interview with the Vail Daily.

And through his work at My Future Pathways, he said he is starting to see “walls slowly come down, especially amongst our youth.”

“A lot of kids are really taking action or we’re setting the stage for them to address these issues. And hopefully, it doesn’t just reach their peers, but their parents and their families see as well,” Lopez said. “We just want to make sure that they have the tools and they know that they have options.”

Building ahead

With the ultimate message of hope, Lamothe said she hopes viewers of “Paradise Paradox” are “compelled to get involved in their communities.”

“I hope that communities are able to model after Eagle County, and I hope that in our lifetimes we are able to shift from a silent and hidden stigma that plagues so many to a thriving re-humanization built around connection, tenderness and support,” she added.  

Here in Eagle County, beginning to address the crisis took the entire community, “everybody leaning in,” Cook said.

“Vail Health needed to be the centerpiece. We needed to provide financial resources, expertise from a management perspective, and so on and so forth,” Cook said. “While health care providers should be the core, you need everybody. And in this valley, there hasn’t been one person who hasn’t leaned in and helped.”

Cook said this has included schools, governments, law enforcement, nonprofits and individual community members “getting around a table, agreeing that there’s a problem and then brainstorming: What are the things that we need to address first? And how are we going to pool precious resources to do it?”

As the film focuses on the progress that’s been made — Vail Health Behavioral Health and its partners are continuing to forge ahead. Cook said that this includes ensuring the community has the right number and mix of providers, ensuring the community has access to the facilities it needs, looking for novel treatments for anxiety and depression and continuing to shift toward prevention.

“The most important thing to do is to get upstream and to focus on wellness and prevention and health,” Cook said. “We still want to have great sick care, but how do we start thinking about whole-person care? How do we get upstream to problems?”

This is where there’s still work to do, he added.

“I think that overall, our entire health care system needs to just swing the pendulum a little bit more back over to the side of health and prevention and wellness,” Cook said.

This goes back to Vail Health’s initial vision for mental and behavioral health, Cook said.

“One of our visions when we started this was that people in this valley would put as much time, attention and resources into their behavioral health as they do their physical health,” he said. “Storytelling really facilitates that, it gets the conversation going. It shares what options are out there — and I’m so proud of all the people who’ve spoken up and shared their story.”

There will be a free advance movie screening of “Paradise Paradox” at the Eagle Public Library on Tuesday, Dec. 19 from 6 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. The screening is meant for teens 13 years old and above as well as adults. There will also be mental health professionals on-site. For more information, visit EVLD.org.

The Borgen Family Foundation, Vail Health and Podium Pictures will also be hosting a screening at the Vilar Performing Arts Center in Beaver Creek on Wednesday, Dec. 20 at 6:30 p.m. A panel discussion will follow the screening. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit VilarPAC.org/The-Paradise-Paradox.