Mayor Brandon Johnson celebrated the reopening a mental health clinic in Roseland on Wednesday as “a promise delivered.”
The Roseland East 115th Street Health Hub, at 200 E. 115th St., will offer immunizations and sexual health care along with mental health services at no-cost, the mayor said.
“We hope that this will be more than a clinic,” Johnson said. “It’s true that this is a gathering space that will foster health and wellness.”
The site is part of Johnson’s mental health expansion plan which includes reopening more of the six clinics shuttered under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Johnson said at Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting, “This space will ensure that the people of Roseland and the South Side have access to services they need.”
“What we’re trying to do is come into the neighborhood and not compete,” said Patrice Lassa, manager of quality assurance at the Chicago Department of Public Health, “but to really try to collaborate and fill the gaps of what’s currently going on in Roseland right now.”
Johnson also praised the expansion of the city’s Crisis Assistance Response & Engagement (CARE) pilot program, in which Chicago Department of Public Health behavioral health clinicians help respond to 9-1-1 calls involving mental health incidents. Now, the CARE program will serve additional areas, including parts of Avalon Park and the Lower West Side.
Additionally, the mayor announced the launch of a Citywide Special Cases team that will operate outside of the 9-1-1 system for all Chicagoans experiencing mental health crises.
The hope is the team can respond to about 500 cases a year, said Health Department Commissioner Olusimbo Ige.
These services combine mobile crisis response, Johnson said, with brick-and-mortar care.
The Roseland clinic will provide mental health care five days a week, and sexual health services — including STI/STD testing and HIV prevention medication like PrEP — days a week.
The reopening of the Roseland clinic follows an expansion in health services at the Pilsen South Ashland Health Hub and the Legler Regional Library in West Garfield Park.
Johnson and Tammy Rutledge, recently named site director at the Roseland location, emphasized the need for expanded mental health services for the city’s Black and Brown populations.
A Sun-Times analysis in 2023 found Black Chicagoans were the only racial group to see higher suicide rates than before the pandemic. In 2024, the trend continued, with Black residents accounting for 17% of all suicides versus 12% in 2019, according to preliminary data. At the time, residents complained of a lack of city-run mental health services in the South and West side neighborhoods.
The mental health care services provided at the health hubs provide residents with “options,” Rutledge said, which Black and Brown residents are often without.
These options range from therapy and healing arts to medication adjustments. A total of 40 clinical therapists work at the seven city-run clinic locations, averaging to about five therapists a clinic, said Dr. Miao Hua, medical director of behavioral health at CDPH.
They hope to lower the wait time for therapy appointments to a week or less, said Hua.
Each clinician can shoulder up to about 50 cases at once, Ige said.
Pilsen’s health hub opened in October and is still a “work in progress,” Lassa said. The same is true for the Legler Regional program, she added.
“Uptake has been slow (at Legler) because people are not coming for treatment, but what we are doing is using that as an opportunity to educate people… to proactively engage at-risk youth to support their mental health,” added Ige.
Moving forward, CDPH leaders hope to publicize the CARE expansion, new mental health services and the Special Cases team so that residents will know more about their options.
Mental health services at the Roseland location are available Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, and until 4:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday.
Sexual health services are available Monday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.