
Published: Oct. 9, 2025 at 10:19 PM CDT
Read the article on the KKCO 11 News Website.
Charles Jernigan, Clinical Manager at Porch Light Health, joined KKCO 11 News to discuss Mental Illness Awareness Week, the importance of reducing stigma around mental health conditions, the strong connection between mental illness and substance use disorders, and how compassionate support and community resources can help people access the care they need on Colorado’s Western Slope.
KKCO 11 News
If you or someone you know has struggled with mental illness or mental health issues, you’re not alone. It’s Mental Illness Awareness Week, a week dedicated to reducing the stigma around this topic and encouraging individuals to seek help for mental health issues. Reporter Wiley Mitchell has more.
Wylee Mitchell
Did you know that two of the most common mental health conditions are depression and anxiety? I spoke with an expert in the field to understand why it’s important to bring awareness to both mental illness and mental health.
Charles Jernigan
Mental illness is a disease, right? Just like diabetics are a disease, cancer is a disease. If we treat these things that way, people are more open to getting involved and getting the care that they need.
Wylee Mitchell
Portslite Health says there’s a strong connection between mental health and substance use issues.
Charles Jernigan
What we’ve noticed is when people have substance abuse issues, it also causes mental health problems for them. It also affects their whole wealth well-being as a person.
Wylee Mitchell
Some common mental health diagnosis are depression, anxiety, and aggression.
Charles Jernigan
With the stigma of mental illness, people are like, Well, I don’t want people to think that I’m crazy or something. So if you remove that as being a stigma and let people know this is an illness just like any other, go to these organizations to get help.
Wylee Mitchell
It may not be an easy conversation, but if you notice a friend or family member is struggling and may need treatment, government. It is important to reach out and let them know that help is available.
Charles Jernigan
If you let them know and be compassionate in a caring standpoint, people will understand we’re doing this for your well-being.
Wylee Mitchell
If you or someone you know is looking for help, there’s a list of local resources available on our website. In Grand Junction, I’m Wiley Mitchell reporting.
KKCO 11 News
And in addition to Mental Illness Awareness Week, tomorrow is also World Mental Health Day.






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Porch Light Health
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email info@frontrangeclinics.com
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to info@frontrangeclinics.com