Johnson campaign promise to reopen mental health clinics and enact ‘Treatment not Trauma’ non-police response gets boost

A proposal to reopen the city’s mental health clinics and expand non-police responses to 911 calls received a symbolic boost Monday during a long-awaited hearing on the signature plank of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s progressive platform that faced roadblocks under previous administrations.

The Health and Human Relations Committee hosted hours of presentations from city officials and advocates from the “Treatment Not Trauma” coalition whose clamors for expanding mental health services without law enforcement were embraced by Johnson as a central campaign theme and inaugural pledge. The resolution is nonbinding; an analysis and future vote on its implementation is the movement’s next objective.

Over the weekend, Johnson gave his latest endorsement of the Treatment Not Trauma movement since assuming office.

“That’s the goal of this administration. Treatment Not Trauma is the way in which we truly create a better, stronger, safer Chicago,” Johnson said at a Saturday summit organized by the activist coalition in Woodlawn. “My administration is going to reopen the mental health clinics that are publicly funded and publicly run.”

Progressive leaders and community members have long mobilized against former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to close half of the city’s 12 public mental health clinics in 2012. Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, vowed to reopen those clinics in her 2019 mayoral campaign but dropped the plan after taking office.

Lightfoot argued that the public health department had better expanded its reach by funding third-party providers, serving more than 60,000 patients throughout the behavioral health ecosystem in 2022 — a point contested by critics who say nonprofits and other contractors offer less transparency than government clinics. Her stance was rejected by rivals in this year’s mayoral race, who said they would reopen the clinics.

Johnson ally Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd, has been one of City Council’s most vocal champions of Treatment Not Trauma, first introducing an ordinance calling for restoring the mental health clinics and funding a non-law-enforcement 911 response in 2020. Her efforts languished in the health committee under the Lightfoot administration, until now.

On Monday, Rodriguez Sanchez presided as Johnson’s new hand-picked chair of the committee and held a one-minute moment of silence for those killed by Chicago police during high-profile mental health crises such as Laquan McDonald, Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones.

“We all know that it’s been a long time for us to be able to come to this moment,” Rodriguez Sanchez said. “... We know that we can save precious lives by caring for people instead of criminalizing them, and that’s what today’s hearing is about.”

Those who testified Monday included Chicago Department of Public Health Deputy Commissioner Matt Richards, a holdover from Lightfoot who has defended keeping the clinics closed, and Dr. Eric Reinhart, a progressive-minded physician who is a potential candidate to replace Arwady and an outspoken critic of the way public health systems operate.

Richards’ remarks signaled the department is angling to pivot with the new administration after years of public health commissioner and Lightfoot appointee Dr. Allison Arwady clashing with advocates on reopening the clinics and other matters.

“We commit very sincerely to be a partner with this new mayor, with the chairwoman, folks in this room to get this done. To get Treatment Not Trauma done,” Richards said. “... You have our commitment that we are going to be a practical partner to help make this happen.”

But as Arwady — whose 2019 confirmation was briefly held up over her refusal to bring back the shuttered mental health clinics — continues to lobby for keeping her job, it was Reinhart who kicked off Monday’s testimony. He spoke of the “devastating consequences” of historic public disinvestment in mental health care.

“The consequence of that is that mental health has been criminalized. Poverty has been criminalized for decades in this country,” Reinhart said. “(CDPH) today is one of the most defunded large public health systems in the country. … This should not be an oppositional matter for the police. This is an essential investment in the people of Chicago.”

Also chiming in were health and safety officials from Denver, New York City, Portland and other cities that have piloted crisis response teams without cops, though they each also have co-responder models similar to Chicago’s where cops and clinicians go out together. Chicago, meanwhile, has run the Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement — or CARE — since 2021, following the worldwide social justice movement against police brutality sparked by George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis.

Progressives and mental health advocates have complained of CARE’s rollout being too slow and too limited, with the “alternate response teams” that do not summon Chicago police to the scene only debuting in the city last summer on the Southwest Side.

Monday’s resolution sponsored by Rodriguez Sanchez calls for four specific planks: to “reopen City-run mental health centers,” including 24-hour walk-in clinics; hire needed staff; “establish mobile crisis response and prevention dispatch infrastructure”; and “provide sustained funding” for Treatment Not Trauma. It is less direct than her earlier legislation that explicitly called for repurposing salaries of vacant police positions toward the cost of sending social workers and other specialists to nonviolent mental health calls.

Since being sworn in as mayor in May, Johnson has taken a middle ground in numerous Chicago political issues, appointing some longtime government operatives to staff his administration and even turning to a decadeslong City Hall veteran to serve as his chief of staff. But on the subject of the mental health clinics, he has remained unapologetically enthusiastic about his intention to reopen the clinics.

Reviving the clinics and implementing the “Treatment Not Trauma” reforms, which aim to expand Chicago’s non-police response to individuals in distress, was a key plank of the Johnson campaign. To follow through, the mayor will likely need to overcome resistance from a skeptical City Hall bureaucracy as well as potential hurdles to staffing the clinics.

One of the Lightfoot administration’s rebuttals to proponents of reopening the clinics was that patient visits were largely dwindling even before the six clinics closed as part of Emanuel’s budget cuts.

City records provided in January show utilization had dropped from about 6,400 clients in 2010 to 5,400 the next year before dipping below 4,200 in 2012. That number continued to ebb and flow under Emanuel and Lightfoot, but by 2022, just under 1,800 patients used the publicly run clinics that year.

Some remarks from council members and public speakers on Monday grew emotional, such as when Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth, 48th, spoke of a stressful interaction she once had with police during her friend’s mental health crisis.

“What am I supposed to do?” Manaa-Hoppenworth said, after choking back tears, about her encounter with the responding cop. “He said, ‘Call your alderman.’ So I’m here in support of Treatment Not Trauma.”

She then confronted Monday’s CDPH representatives for preserving CARE’s co-responder model with Chicago police, to which Richards said the agency was merely following the mayor’s marching orders: “It’s really a policy decision, and the health department does not make policy decisions.”

But any effort to change how mental health services are delivered will take time and presumably taxpayer money. Rodriguez Sanchez said the next step will be to assemble a working group to look at implementation, indicating it may not be possible to fund the reopening of all the clinics in the 2024 city budget.

During Johnson’s remarks Saturday, he also touched on his personal stake in creating an “alternative” care system for those with mental illnesses.

“I want people like my brother Leon, who died addicted and unhoused, to have true supportive services that they deserve and need,” Johnson said before asserting: “We can’t lose anyone else. We can’t afford it, Chicago.”