Thresholds Outpatient and Intensive Outpatient Services are person-centered, trauma-informed, and evidence-based.
Our model is to bring a comprehensive suite of services to wherever our clients are.
Thresholds provides mental health crisis response in Chicago through two programs – our Living Room and our Mobile Crisis Response Team.
The Thresholds Workforce Development Department offers workshops, conferences and other training opportunities.
Thresholds offers groundbreaking programs for adolescents, young adults, families, young mothers, and their children.
Thresholds offers services designed to integrate mental health, substance use, and primary care treatment.
Our mission is to provide data to support decision-making meant to improve quality of care, optimize health outcomes, and lower costs.
The Centers provide a wide range of mental health and substance use treatment services to their immediate surrounding communities in Ravenswood and McHenry County.
The only program of its kind in Illinois, offering services for persons with mental illnesses who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
Thresholds’ Peer Success program is operated by consumers – those who have a lived experience of mental illness.
Thresholds is the largest provider of supported housing in Illinois and provides comprehensive services for persons experiencing homelessness.
Thresholds provides clients with the support and services needed to achieve independence to class members of the Williams Consent Decree.
Thresholds offers services to members of the armed forces who are experiencing PTSD, trauma, substance use disorders, and much more.
Thresholds’ Employment Specialists place clients in jobs of their choice to create real economic independence.
The Thresholds Creative Arts Therapy team, made up of a diverse range of trained art therapists, provides our clients tools for wellness.
The majority of Thresholds’ services take place out in the community, not in a clinic or other office-based setting. Our model is to bring wraparound services to wherever our clients are.
Thresholds clients are all unique; they come from vastly different backgrounds and arrive with different needs, talents, and hopes. As such, a variety of services are at their full disposal, ranging from access to medical care and psychiatric treatment, job readiness and work placement, educational opportunities, or a safe and stable place to live. Thresholds believes everyone contributes to society. Everyone should have the opportunity to live a life of value, self-respect, compassion, and dignity.
Depending on needs and severity of symptoms, an individual is connected to one of three levels of treatment intensity: the Assertive Community Treatment Team; the less intensive Community Support Team, and finally the Community Support Individual Team, which is considered the final level of service before full self-sufficiency. These models use a multidisciplinary team approach to provide intensive services where and when our clients need them—24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Our staffed teams include peer support specialists and practitioners with expertise in psychiatry, nursing, social work, substance use treatment, and employment. These teams initiate the housing search, develop a care plan, and continue to work with clients over the long-term. Because team members share responsibility for providing treatment and rehabilitation services, the entire team supports each client’s personalized goal of recovery.
Transitioning from Institutional Care
Thresholds was one of five initial providers selected by the Illinois Division of Mental Health (DMH) in 2012 to provide services to the class members of the Williams Consent Decree. In the first year, we transitioned 40% of the 256 class members that were identified for community reintegration. We assisted these individuals with obtaining a leased apartment in the community of their choice.
Thresholds provides these clients with the necessary supports and wrap-around services needed to achieve successful independence, including nurse care coordination of primary, specialty and psychiatric care, meaningful activity through supported employment and education services, and peer-run drop-in centers for wellness activities and social opportunities.
In 2017, Thresholds celebrated the transition of 1,000 Williams and ensuing Colbert class members since these consent decrees began. Our efforts to integrate members of both classes continues today.
At Thresholds, we believe that a key to the future of mental healthcare is integrating primary and mental health in a very holistic, person-centered way.
On average, persons with serious mental illnesses die 25-30 years earlier than the rest of the population. Early mortality is due to a host of secondary health issues that they face, some related to psychiatric medication, some related to poor access to care, and some to lifestyle factors like poverty and homelessness. Most of these deaths are preventable. Like persons in the general population, people with serious mental illnesses often suffer from chronic conditions, such as diabetes or hypertension that when properly addressed can be managed and are not life threatening.
If not adequately addressed, persons with serious mental illnesses will continue to have the highest Medicaid costs of any group. Currently, they are 2.5 times as likely to be hospitalized and 1.7 times as likely to utilize emergency rooms. Thresholds offers services designed to integrate mental health, substance use, and primary care treatment. This is done by providing a person-centered, holistic approach to recovery through our partnerships with like-minded Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC). These partners have co-located their clinics into three Thresholds programs.
We have 75 outreach teams working closely with our FQHC partners to coordinate all care, engage clients in services, provide education on illness and wellness strategies, and advocate for their health care needs. Thresholds and our partners strive to improve health outcomes and inspire clients’ wellness and holistic recovery. Coordinated care cuts Medicaid costs by reducing unnecessary and costly hospitalizations and incentivizing health outcomes, instead of volume of services provided.
Tapestry 360 – 4423 N Ravenswood Ave
Thresholds and Tapestry 360 have been partners since October 2016 when Tapestry 360 (Formerly Heartland Health Center) opened a health center at the Schwartz Center solely for Thresholds clients. It is a truly integrated center where services are provided in a highly coordinated manner – including primary care, psychiatry, dental, and substance use treatment.
Howard Brown Health at Thresholds South – 734 W 47th St
Thresholds and Howard Brown Health (HBH) entered a partnership in October 2016, offering clients integrated primary and psychiatry care at the Thresholds South location. HBH offers primary, psychiatry, dental, and substance use treatment services.
Aunt Martha’s Health and Wellness
Thresholds is a proud partner of Aunt Martha’s, an organization that shares our commitment to replacing loneliness, sickness, and despair with wholeness, healing, and hope.
Genoa Pharmacy
Thresholds and Tapestry 360 at the Schwartz Center have partnered with Genoa, who offers an onsite pharmacy that specializes in the complex medication needs of Thresholds clients.
PCC Community Wellness Center
Thresholds is also proud to partner with PCC Community Wellness Center. Thresholds clients that live on the west side and the near west suburbs of Chicago enjoy a preferred status relationship with PCC.
