Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday unveiled long-awaited plans to expand public access to mental health care in Chicago and reopen a shuttered city clinic, a promise he campaigned on.
This year the city plans to re-open the Roseland Mental Health Clinic and add mental health services at the city’s Pilsen clinic and at the Legler Regional Library in West Garfield Park. These neighborhoods were picked based on need, and the city says Legler is one of the busiest distribution sites for the overdose-reversing nasal spray Narcan.
“Mental health is not merely a personal matter: it is a collective concern that touches every corner of our community, from our homes to our schools and workplaces, and beyond,” Johnson wrote in a report from a working group that has been studying how to expand mental health services in Chicago.
Johnson has often spoken about his brother, Leon, who he said died addicted to drugs and unhoused. He invoked his brother’s name again Thursday as he vowed the city is “prioritizing those who have been left behind and discarded by previous administrations.”
“Our city went from 19 mental health centers to a mere five. And we began relying heavily on our police and fire departments to respond to behavioral health crises. But that trend ends today,” Johnson said standing in front of the red brick building that formerly housed the Roseland clinic, later adding: “I’ll continue to keep my brother Leon front and center”
The city also wants to phase out the use of police responding to mental health crises. Instead it wants to double the number of so-called CARE Alternate Response teams, where paramedics and mental health workers go out on calls. The goal is to de-escalate someone who is struggling with a mental health issue and connect them to the medical care they need without police involvement.
Mental health advocates who have pushed the city to reopen the clinics for years were emotional as they reflected on the long sought after re-opening. Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, 33rd Ward and a main sponsor of the Treatment Not Trauma campaign, said advocates “fought like hell” after being “told ‘no’ way too many times.”
“I want to thank the mayor for keeping your promises,” said Diane Adams, a longtime advocate of public mental health clinics who participated in a barricade of the Woodlawn clinic to protest its closure. “I’m a person that came out of the system. Look at me now. I’m a strong woman now.”
The working group formed last fall to study how to expand public mental health. Advocates including the Collaborative for Community Wellness have documented the lack of mental health providers across the city and how that trickles down to people who need help, such as long wait times to see a provider. They’ve pushed for Chicago to re-open city-run mental health clinics that were closed under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel more than a decade ago. Today there are five.
Emanuel’s successor Lori Lightfoot took a different approach, expanding access to mental health care by investing in dozens of private and non-profit health clinics that already provide it. A study last year from the collaborative still found barriers to receiving care at some of the health centers.
Johnson pledged to re-open the city’s mental health clinics. In his first year he launched an assessment of the city’s mental health landscape and unceremoniously fired Lightfoot’s health commissioner, Dr. Allison Arwady, who championed using private, nonprofit providers to expand access for Chicagoans. In his first budget, Johnson included funding to reopen two clinics and expand the CARE teams’ reach.
Asked if the city will wean its use of private, nonprofit providers to fund the expansion of public services, Johnson’s public health commissioner Dr. Simbo Ige said, “We are using all of our options, because the need is huge.”
These providers are often the backbone for health care in low-income communities.
More than 65% of Black and Latino Chicagoans who have serious psychological distress are not receiving any treatment, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health. While white people made up the highest rates of Chicago residents who died by suicide from 2018-2022, there was an uptick among seniors and Black residents in particular.
There are roughly 40 recommendations from the working group that act as a roadmap to expand access to mental health. Broadly they include adding more services, improving and expanding a response to behavioral and mental health crises that do not involve the police, and boosting community awareness of available mental health resources.
In recent listening sessions about what Chicagoans want for mental health care, the majority didn’t know the city had free mental health clinics, according to the collaborative.
Looking ahead, the working group recommends the city prioritize 24-7 access to services and that the government come up with metrics to track and evaluate the mental health expansion.
The group also acknowledged that reopening more mental health centers is not always the solution despite the harm it might have caused people and communities. There might be different models of care to explore.
“Simply put, what worked in 2012 may not work today,” the report said, a nod to the year Emanuel closed half of the city’s 12 mental health clinics.
In its report, the working group highlights a host of challenges. The city is competing with hospitals, private practices and other organizations amid a shortage of mental health workers and already is struggling to fill open positions, though the report also says the public health department has hired enough clinicians to staff the three new mental health sites this year. Ige said the city has already hired 19 therapists.
The group recommends the city build a Community Care Corps to staff the clinics and CARE teams with not only providers but case managers and peer support workers.
“It is critical that the Corps includes jobs that do not require advanced degrees and are accessible to individuals with lived experience,” the report said.
The city’s public health department had nearly 500 vacancies last year, making up a little over 40% of its positions. Beniamino Capellupo with the city’s Human Resources Department said the government has worked to make pay more competitive, bolster its recruitment and post openings more quickly, including already posting an Emergency Medical Technician role that will be part of the expanded program.
“The truth of the matter is we have a ton of vacancies and we have a ton of openings,” Capellupo said. “But we need our recruiters out and so we’re encouraging recruiters to actually get out in the community, go to job fairs.”
Other challenges include how expensive it can be to maintain and expand mental health services, especially as pandemic relief dollars run out. And while the city has provided medical care in its clinics for years, behavioral health crisis response is relatively new for Chicago, the report said.
Johnson’s plan is estimated to cost around $21 million this year, which had already been accounted for in the mayor’s budget. By 2027, those costs are expected to climb to $37 million. The working group estimates there will be a nearly $20 million funding gap that year.
Rodriguez-Sanchez said the dream would be “to reopen them all” and have a city-run mental health center in each ward.
“I know that that is very ambitious… but this is how we win,” she said. “We have big dreams and we have big ambitions, and then slowly we start making those dreams come true and taking steps towards what we actually want to see.”
The city clinics have been underutilized in the past, and asked if the cost was worth the investment, Johnson was adamant: “Any investment that we make towards providing mental health services for families, it’s a worthwhile investment.”
Kristen Schorsch covers public health and Cook County government for WBEZ. Tessa Weinberg covers city government and politics for WBEZ.
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