Giving Compass' Take:

• Governing magazine reports on a growing concern in many cities across the U.S. over a lack of public funding for mental health services and clinics; Chicago has especially been hit hard by cuts.

• Private funders may be counted on to fill the financing gaps, but that will only go so far. How can policymakers and mental health advocates work together to reverse the trend described in this piece?

• Here's why mental health access among youth may be aided through electronic referrals and follow-ups.

All over the United States, mental health providers are struggling to find new ways to make treatment more accessible. The Affordable Care Act made a commitment to cover mental health on par with other forms of care, but the provision has not been enforced. Still, with more Americans insured than ever before -- and more stakeholders shifting from a fee-for-service model to one that incentivizes healthy behavior -- the health-care industry is moving toward a system that treats people more holistically, taking social determinants of health into account. But it is far from achieving that goal. And money continues to be an intractable problem.

These strains are present in Chicago. In addition to the cuts from the city, Illinois has recently emerged from a two-year-long budget impasse, in which state-funded Medicaid mental health services were a primary casualty, with some mental health services going unfunded for months. At the height of the state’s budget crisis, Screening, Assessment and Support Services (SASS), a state-funded crisis response program, was able to offer its services only one day a week. Thresholds, a nonprofit institution that is one of the largest mental health providers in the state, found in 2013, before the worst of the budget impasse, that emergency mental health hospitalizations due to state spending budget cuts had already cost Illinois $18 million.

Read the full article about shutting down mental health clinics by Mattie Quinn at Governing magazine.