AURORA | The city’s therapeutic “resiliency” center will open to victims directly and indirectly impacted by the July 20 Aurora theater shooting in mid-June.
The vacant Hoffman Heights Library will house the center, which will offer free services including group counseling, individual counseling, and health and wellness activities such as yoga and Zumba classes. The center will cost about $35,000 annually to operate and will be open for up to two years.
“We’re still in the process of getting all the pieces in place,” said Karen Morales, spokeswoman for the 7/20 Recovery Committee. The facility will be named the Aurora Strong Resilience Center.
“We were looking for something that conveyed strength and the long-term nature of what resilience is all about,” Morales said. “It’s not something you accomplish because of a trauma that you went through, it’s about how you prepare for a lifetime of experiences that you might not have been prepared for.”
The resiliency center will open during the second or third week of June, initially to victims who were directly and indirectly impacted by the Aurora theater shooting. Then, it will have a grand opening celebration in mid-July, opening to all Aurora residents who have been affected by any kind of trauma or tragedy, or those who want to learn coping skills to prepare themselves for an unexpected tragedy.
“We’ve got a lot of folks in the community who are actively managing the after-effects of the (7/20) tragedy, and then we’ve got the rest of the community who we’d like to start introducing to this concept of resilience, and what the individual can do to prepare themselves for trauma,” Morales said.
The plan for the center was loosely based off of “Columbine Connections,” a healing center for victims of the Columbine High School shootings and “Project Heartland,” a mental health services center for victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Kevin Everhart, a psychologist and associate clinical teaching professor at the University of Colorado’s Department of Psychology said the resiliency center is an innovative and “excellent” resource for the community.
“This is something that can bring about positive change and help the community cope with and even come to thrive in the face of the 7/20 shootings,” he said. “This is a progressive step.”
For many people, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder don’t occur until months or even years after the tragedy or trauma. The resiliency center will give people an opportunity to take advantage of services they might not even know they need, Everhart said.
“We have evolved a great many mechanisms for shielding ourselves from anxiety and distress,” he said.
Combining mental health services with active, exercise-focused activities at no cost will be hugely beneficial to the Aurora community, he said.
Members of the 7/20 Recovery Committee came up with the idea for a resiliency center after discussions about the long-term healing process in the wake of the theater tragedy. Communities that don’t respond to post-event stress see increases in domestic violence and divorce, family dysfunction, substance abuse, increases in drop-out rates and fatalities due to suicide, according to the documents.
Partners involved in the creation of the resiliency center include the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora Mental Health and the city’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space department. Representatives from the Colorado Organization for Victims Assistance will have regular office hours at the center, and will also be conducting group victim support services.
Reach reporter Sara Castellanos at 720-449-9036 or sara@aurorasentinel.com.