Oak Park’s village government is committed to funding a new community mental health crisis program over a three-year pilot period.
Oak Park’s village board voted in the fall to provide $450,000 in grant funding over the course of three years to NAMI Metro Suburban to support the mental health care organization establishing a new “living room” crisis care program in Oak Park. NAMI had already allocated over $205,000 in yearly funding for the program but needed $150,000 in yearly grants from the village to cover the program’s budget.
“The village of Oak Park is proud to join committed partners in supporting this nationally recognized model here in our community,” village officials said in a statement this week. “By investing in the Living Room Project, Oak Park reaffirms its commitment to expanding and enhancing access to critical, compassionate mental health services for residents.”
Oak Park Township’s Community Mental Health Board supported NAMI’s proposal to the village.
Living room programs are a type of mental health crisis intervention care in which trained crisis recovery staff work out of home-like spaces where patients come to de-escalate their mental health episode without the need for hospitalization. The NAMI Metro Suburban chapter group already operates living room programs in Summit and in La Grange.
Local living room programs can help reduce the strain on emergency rooms, according to NAMI’s presentation to the Oak Park board.
“Although emergency rooms are designed for acute physical ailments, over 12% of all visits are due to mental illness or substance use,” NAMI wrote in its proposal. “Despite not having psychiatry beds, Rush Oak Park Hospital reported that for calendar year 2023, it had 757 visits to the emergency department related to psychiatric crisis. Over 27% of those visits were from Oak Park residents. This underscores an urgent community need for effective and accessible mental health support in Oak Park. Unfortunately, many hospitals and their emergency departments – including Rush Oak Park Hospital and West Suburban Medical Center — are not adequately equipped to treat mental illness, whether because of short staffing, hospital policy surrounding treatment times, or stressful surroundings.”
According to the proposal, the West Suburban Consolidated Dispatch Center, which handles 911 calls for Oak Park, River Forest and Forest Park, received over 2,500 calls related to psychiatric distress, most of which were for Oak Park residents.
NAMI would look to convert its office space at 816 Harrison St. in Oak Park into a home for the program, according to the group’s proposal.
