Health
Johnson Announces Plans to Expand Chicago’s Mental Health Services, Reopen Roseland Mental Health Clinic
Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks outside Roseland Mental Health Center on May 30, 2024. (WTTW News)
Chicago officials plan to expand mental health services on the South and West sides and revise the city’s mental health response protocols to remove police and fire personnel from its crisis response teams.
Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday announced plans to reopen the city-run Roseland Mental Health Center by the end of this year, and open two other mental health service sites at the Legler Regional Library on the West Side and at the Chicago Department of Public Health’s Lower West Side vaccine clinic in Pilsen.
“Today my administration is taking extraordinary steps to reverse the course and expand our city’s systems of mental health,” Johnson said outside the Roseland Mental Health Center. “We are standing here on the Far South Side to make it clear that we are prioritizing those who have been left behind and discarded by previous administrations.”
His announcement Thursday comes after Johnson campaigned in support of reopening city mental health clinics and has repeatedly vowed to do just that, reassuring skittish allies still angry that his predecessor Mayor Lori Lightfoot broke her 2019 campaign promise to reopen the clinics closed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
“We fought like hell to be able to get the kind of care that our communities deserve and we were told no way too many times,” said Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd Ward), who chairs the city’s Committee on Health and Human Relations. “But movement did what movement needed to do — organize — and we organized our hearts out.”
Johnson also said that beginning this year, the city’s Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement, or CARE, teams will be staffed fully by Chicago Department of Public Health employees, while members of Chicago’s police and fire departments — who had been involved in those response plans — will be phased out.
The goal of the CARE teams is to eliminate arrests and use-of-force incidents for callers who need support while experiencing mental health issues.
Those teams had initially included police officers trained in crisis intervention, a mental health professional and a CFD paramedic, but the city previously paired those down to just a paramedic and a clinician.
Johnson on Thursday said those calling for help during a mental health crisis deserve trauma-informed responses, while police and firefighters deserve to focus on “holding criminals responsible and putting out fires.”
“We began relying heavily on our police and fire departments to respond to behavioral health crises,” Johnson said. “But that trend ends today.”
CDPH Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo Ige said the city has already hired 19 people to work in the mental health clinics. She said those new hires, many of whom are Black and Brown, will “serve our communities with compassion.”
“There is going to be help right here,” Ige said. “We want you to know that we’re not just bringing therapists, we’re going to bring therapists that look like us, that understand our culture.”
According to Ige, there are more than 300,000 Chicagoans currently awaiting mental health services, but the maximum caseload for each city therapist is about 50.
In his remarks Thursday, Johnson reflected on the loss of his brother, Leon, who struggled with mental illness and addiction and was unhoused when he ultimately passed away. Johnson said he believed his brother’s life could have been longer if he had access to the mental health services he needed.
“Would he still be on this Earth if he had the language to say what he needed?” Johnson asked. “That’s why it’s personal for me today. It’s very personal for me to be up here today.”
Heather Cherone contributed to this report.
