During a meeting of the Illinois Board of Higher Education Wednesday, members received an update on Illinois’ plan to improve the behavioral health workforce and advocates called on Gov. JB Pritzker to release discretionary funding for public universities. 

The Behavioral Health Workforce Center was created through the 2021 Illinois Health Care and Human Service Reform Act, though funding for the center was not made available until the 2022 veto session.  

The Illinois State Board of Higher Education administers the center, located at the Southern Illinois University (SIU) School of Medicine in Springfield and the University of Illinois Chicago.   

The center’s goal is to recruit and retain a diverse behavioral health workforce in Illinois. This is accomplished through research to identify workforce needs across the state, increasing educational opportunities for students and helping Illinois students find careers in the field.  

Despite the country facing a mental health crisis, there is nationwide a shortage of behavioral health workers – a shortage that’s expected to get worse. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services projects that by 2037, there will be a shortage of more than 87,000 mental health counselors, 79,000 psychologists, 50,000 psychiatrists and 39,000 school counselors.  

This shortage is largely driven by barriers to education access, such as cost, and low wages in the field, according to the National Council for Mental Wellbeing.  

Kari Wolf, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at SIU, is the president and CEO of the center. She said they estimate Illinois currently has about 22 percent of the workforce needed to properly serve the state.   

“The goal of this work is really to think systematically at how we partner with existing educational systems, existing healthcare delivery systems, to create a robust behavioral health workforce,” Wolf said.  

She said the center is currently working on gathering more complete data on how many workers there currently are and where the greatest need is. She said they’re also looking at policy ideas on how to create a better pathway for students to go from community college to four-year schools to graduate school while saving money. This also includes creating better pathways for people looking to change their career to behavioral health.  

Wolf said one of the biggest challenges for students is a lack of training sites outside of Chicago and the suburbs. For example, she said psychiatrist students need to complete an accredited internship during their schooling, and the only accredited internship opportunity outside of the Chicago-area is in Carbondale.  

Wolf said retention is another key area of focus, as many students who train in Illinois end up leaving the state.  

Training the existing healthcare workforce is another area of improvement.  

“There are a lot of healthcare practitioners out there who, when they went to medical school, when they went to residency, didn't know that they were going to be treating behavioral health patients in their primary care practices, in their emergency rooms,” Wolf said. “So how do we help build the skills of the existing healthcare workforce?” 

She said this also includes improving the quality of therapy people currently receive. Wolf said only about 40 percent of therapy currently is evidence-based.  

“If we can improve the quality of therapy that's provided, if we can improve the quality of medications that are provided to patients, that creates more capacity in our existing workforce, because people get better and no longer need that therapy or need to be seeing that practitioner,” Wolf said.  

Wolf said many of these issues boil down to a lack of funding in the field. She said the center has also been meeting with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to see if there are federal funds that could be used to improve the work force.  

Advocates call for increased funding for public schools  

Jennifer Juárez, director of higher education policy at the Latino Policy Forum, spoke during public comment to call for the release of additional discretionary funding for Illinois’ public universities.  

In the state budget, lawmakers increased the amount of funding public universities and colleges receive by one percent. They included an additional two percent increase that can be released at the governor's discretion.  

This discretionary funding increase is intended to combat cuts from the federal government.  

Juárez said it’s time for that funding to be released.  

Many funding cuts have come through the cancelation of grants. With some Illinois public universities already facing tight budgets, these cuts can have a big impact, Juárez said.  

“We cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes of the past and allow short-term funding gaps to undermine long-term progress,” she said.  

Kyle Southern, executive director of the Partnership for College Completion, said the one percent increase is below inflation, meaning budgets were effectively cut for schools as their operational costs increase. He said releasing the additional two percent funding increase would help prevent schools from losing more money.  

He also asked for the funding to be released based on need.   

“Illinois must prioritize its most vulnerable students and the institutions that serve them,” Southern said. “That's how we achieve equity through action.”