Current Research Initiatives

Examining Barriers to Mental Health Service Accessibility in Chicago’s Privatized Network of Trauma-Informed Centers of Care

 

Although the Lightfoot administration promoted the TICC network as offering “no-barrier access to mental health services…across all 77 Chicago community areas,” findings from the current study make it strikingly apparent that Chicago’s privatized mental health service landscape is far from facilitating no-barrier access. The vast majority of Chicago’s population does not have access to barrier-free mental health services through a privatized provider. Instead, access barriers including challenging phone systems, lengthy wait times for services, documentation status, insurance status, service cost, and requirements among FQHCs stating that an individual must have a primary care doctor at the location in order to receive mental health services persist more than three years after the TICC network was implemented. Such findings indicate that investing solely in privatized providers is not sufficient to ensure that all Chicagoans can access mental health support in their moment of need. Instead, it is critical that the City invest in a safety net of public mental health centers that offer free, time-unlimited mental health services to all individuals at the moment that they are seeking services, regardless of immigration status, insurance status, and socioeconomic background.