Conditions We Treat
Depression treatment in Colorado, for the version of this that will not lift.
Outpatient care for major, persistent, and seasonal depression, and for the drinking or using that often grows around it. Six Colorado offices and online, starting with a free and confidential assessment.
Understanding Depression
Two weeks is the line, and most people wait a lot longer.
Everyone has bad weeks. Depression is what happens when the bad week does not end and starts taking things with it: the job you were good at, the people you used to call back, the food you used to like. The clinical line is more specific than most people expect. The National Institute of Mental Health notes that to be diagnosed with depression, a person must have symptoms most of the day, nearly every day, for at least 2 weeks. That threshold is what separates a hard stretch from a condition, and it is also why waiting it out so often fails: past two weeks, this is generally not something that lifts on its own.
It is also not rare, and it is not a failure of character. NIMH estimates that in 2021, 21.0 million American adults, 8.3 percent of the adult population, had at least one major depressive episode. What surprises people more is the second half of that data: about 61 percent of them got treatment in the past year, which leaves nearly four in ten who did not.
The Redpoint Center is an outpatient provider. We do not operate a detox unit or an inpatient psychiatric unit, so when someone needs that level of care first, we help them get to it and pick their care up from there. For most people living with depression, though, outpatient is exactly the right place, because the work has to happen inside the life you are actually going back to.
Signs And Symptoms
What depression actually looks like from the inside.
It is rarely the crying-in-a-dark-room picture. More often it is a slow subtraction, and the people around you notice the absence before you find a word for it. Any of these, held most of the day and nearly every day for two weeks or more, is worth an assessment.
A mood that will not move
Sad, anxious, or simply empty, and stubbornly unresponsive to the things that used to shift it. Some people feel flattened rather than sad, which is why it goes unnamed for so long.
Nothing is worth wanting
Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies, work, food, sex, and people. The plans do not get cancelled so much as quietly stop being made.
Tired in a way sleep does not fix
Fatigue, moving and speaking more slowly, sleeping far more than usual or waking at four in the morning and not getting back.
A mind that will not hold a thought
Trouble concentrating, remembering, or making decisions. Small choices become genuinely difficult, which people tend to read as a personal failing rather than a symptom.
The body carries it too
Appetite and weight changes, headaches, aches, cramps, or digestive trouble with no clear physical cause and no clear response to treatment.
Guilt, worthlessness, and darker thoughts
Irritability and restlessness, a running case against yourself, and for some people thoughts of death or suicide. If you are there right now, call or text 988 before you finish reading this page.
Clinical Forms
Depression is a category, not a single diagnosis.
These are the forms NIMH names, and telling them apart is not academic. The plan that helps one of them can be the wrong plan for another, which is why an accurate assessment comes before a program.
Two weeks or more
Major depressive disorder
The form most people mean by depression. Symptoms present most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks, and heavy enough to interfere with work, sleep, eating, and the people around you.
Years, not weeks
Persistent depressive disorder
Longer-lasting and less severe, sometimes called dysthymia. People who live with it often do not describe themselves as depressed. They describe themselves as a naturally negative person, which is a diagnosis wearing a personality.
Winter pattern
Seasonal affective disorder
A recurrent seasonal pattern lasting about four to five months a year, usually starting in late fall and lifting in spring. NIMH notes it is more common farther north, where winter daylight is shorter.
Pregnancy and after
Perinatal depression
Depression during pregnancy or after childbirth, which is a medical condition rather than a verdict on anyone as a parent, and which responds to treatment.
Higher acuity
Depression with psychosis
Severe depression accompanied by delusions or hallucinations. This one needs a higher level of care first. We assess it, help you reach that care, and take over when you are stable.
Co-occurring Substance Use
The drinking usually starts as the solution.
Depression and substance use arrive together often enough that treating either one alone is the most common reason treatment does not hold.
People rarely arrive here describing one problem. Depression flattens a day, and drinking or using is often what makes the evening survivable, at least at first. The relief is real and it is short, and then it charges interest: alcohol is a depressant, sleep degrades, mornings get worse, and the thing that was supposed to make the depression bearable is quietly making it deeper.
This is common enough to be the norm rather than the complication. Citing the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that 35 percent of U.S. adults who have another mental disorder also have a substance use disorder. It notes three routes into that overlap, and all three show up in our assessments: shared risk factors like inherited traits, trauma and chronic stress; people using substances to cope with depression, stress, or pain, especially without access to mental health care; and substance use itself changing the same brain systems involved in mood disorders.
The mistake is treating one and hoping the other resolves. Care for depression tends to stall while drinking continues, and sobriety that leaves the depression untouched is a hard thing to hold on to. NIDA is direct about the answer, noting that integrated treatment leads to better health outcomes for people with substance use and other mental disorders. That is how our programs are built: one plan, one clinical team, both conditions in the same room. Our dual diagnosis page covers how that works week to week, and our alcohol addiction page covers the pairing we see most.
How We Treat It
Thinking, activity, and a room that argues back.
Treatment starts with an assessment rather than a program. We sit down and work out how long this has been going on, how far it reaches into your week, whether substances are part of it, whether trauma is underneath it, and how much structure you actually need. That conversation is free and confidential, and it commits you to nothing.
From there the work is mostly two things at once. In individual sessions, cognitive behavioral therapy goes after the thinking that keeps depression running, the case your mind builds that nothing will help and nothing will change, and tests it against what actually happens. Alongside it comes the unglamorous part that moves the needle fastest: rebuilding activity and routine deliberately, in small steps, before the motivation shows up. Depression tells you to wait until you feel like it. The work is learning not to wait.
The other half is the group room, and for depression specifically it does something individual therapy cannot. Depression is a convincing liar about how alone you are, and it loses a great deal of its authority in a room of people describing your own week back to you.
- Individual therapy
- Group therapy
- Family involvement
- Medication support when it fits
- Recurrence and relapse planning
Levels of Care
How much structure your week actually needs.
Severity is what decides this, not willpower or how bad you think it should be before you are allowed to ask. Most people start with an assessment, enter the level that fits, and step down as things stabilize.
Depression treatment is covered more often than people assume.
Behavioral health benefits are hard to read and easy to underestimate. Let us check your plan and tell you what we find, including what it does not cover. Verification is free and commits you to nothing.
Accepted insurance
Employer and EAP partners
Don’t see your plan? Call us and we will check it, including out-of-network benefits.
Clinical Approaches
Which therapy does what, for this.
Where We Treat It
Six Colorado offices, and online for everywhere else.
Depression is treated at every Redpoint location. Which programs run at which office varies, so if the nearest one does not offer the level you need, we will tell you plainly and point you at the one that does.
Common Questions
Depression treatment questions, answered.
How do I know if this is depression and not just a rough patch?
Can outpatient treatment really help severe depression?
Do I have to take medication to be treated here?
What if I drink or use something to cope with it?
Is winter depression treated differently in Colorado?
Does insurance cover depression treatment in Colorado?
What should I do if I am having thoughts of suicide?
You do not have to be at your worst to call.
Most people wait far longer than they needed to, usually because they were not sure it counted yet. Send us a note or call (303) 219-0973, and we will help you work out what is going on and what would actually help.