On the morning of Feb. 4, Taylor Lazar and many of her coworkers in the virtual behavioral health integration team at SSM Health noticed a 10-minute meeting suddenly added between patient calls. By the end of the day, those meetings delivered unexpected layoff notices to most of the team.
Lazar had 15 minutes before she was locked out of her online workstation and was unsure what would happen to her patients.
“I’ve talked to people through that position who were actively suicidal,” Lazar said, and added, that if she and her colleagues hadn’t been there to assist people experiencing extreme distress, “I don’t know who they would have reached out to.”
Lazar had been working as a behavioral health therapist with SSM Health for almost a year and a half, providing free mental health services to patients who were screened for depression at a SSM Health appointment. Many of these patients were experiencing an active crisis and, more often than not, had not yet been able to access traditional forms of mental health care, like therapy.
“When I was working there, I just thought it was the coolest program,” Lazar said. “It was life-changing in a lot of ways for people.”
By providing assessments, resources, safety plans and determining patients’ degree of crisis, the team, according to Lazar, was able to incorporate mental health care into SSM’s primary care and help prevent unnecessary psychiatric hospital admissions. With far fewer behavioral therapists on staff, she worries that SSM won’t be able to serve nearly as many patients.
SSM Health did not respond to multiple requests for comment before publication.
Bringing primary care doctors and behavioral health professionals together through programs like SSM’s health integration team is part of what is known as the collaborative care model. By integrating psychiatric services into primary care settings, it expands access to high-quality treatment without long waitlists.
According to Dr. Ronald Diamond, a retired psychiatrist who now consults therapists and primary care doctors in the UW Health system, in practice, the model benefits both patients and providers.
“The primary care docs that I’ve spent time with, and that’s quite a few, realize that they’re not doing as good a job as they would like, and the idea of having an embedded therapist with a consulting psychiatrist has been met with raging acceptance,” Diamond said in an interview.
Diamond has also noticed that the majority of people with psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression are seen by primary care physicians rather than a psychiatrist or therapist.
While significant psychological distress in patients can interfere with both their social lives and their physical health, many people still stigmatize mental health care or are unable to identify that physical symptoms may be associated with psychological ones, he added.
Photo by Kat Hans.
“You may have chronic abdominal pain, you’re not going out very much and the things you used to enjoy just are not enjoyable anymore. You may not define that as depression, but that may be what it is,” Diamond said, referring to cases he encounters while consulting with primary care physicians.
An estimated one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness, but nationwide Americans are experiencing shortages of mental health providers and struggle to find affordable access to therapy. While collaborative care models can help address these gaps, ongoing cuts to government grants supporting mental health care are limiting these programs. Without sustained investment in services and a continued effort to reduce stigma, access to care will remain out of reach to those who are suffering mental illness.
According to data from the Health Resources and Services Administration, more than half of Wisconsin’s counties are designated mental health shortage areas, meaning there are not enough mental health professionals to serve community needs. In Wisconsin, shortage areas affect more than 2.1 million people. As the demand for these services grows, wait times and prices also increase.
“Waitlists at SSM when I was working there for therapy were three months sometimes,” said a former therapist at SSM Health who requested anonymity due to concerns about professional repercussions. “With our services being free, we were able to provide that support in that gap when people didn’t have anywhere to go.”
Diamond said collaborative care helps address both the stigma of seeking psychiatric care and the difficulty of getting an appointment.
Accessing mental health support through “primary care is a lot less stigmatizing. It’s a lot easier and friendlier. There’s a shorter waitlist,” he said. “If you make an appointment with a psychiatrist, it’s a long time. It feels cruddy. You may have not even defined your problem as depression or anxiety.”
National data reflects this discomfort around mental illness. A 2025 poll conducted by the American Psychological Association found that 88% of U.S. adults report that having a mental health disorder is not shameful, yet 84% say the term “mental illness” carries a stigma.
Even for people open to therapy, Lazar explained, many people have no idea where to start on their hunt for a therapist, or understand which services are covered by their insurance. For someone already struggling, all of the steps required for finding the right care can be especially daunting.
“One of the biggest symptoms of any depressive disorder is lack of motivation, lack of interest in doing things, lack of energy. That in and of itself is such a barrier to even attend an appointment, much less do all the research,” Lazar said.
Lazar added that by having a behavioral health therapist providing resources and scheduling appointments, many more SSM patients were encouraged to take the next steps in getting mental health treatment.
Without easy access to care, fewer patients are likely to seek help, and advocates like Lazar worry that more people may experience suicidal thoughts and anxiety, and face consequences such as losing their jobs or an inability to work due to untreated mental health issues.
“Just so many things come out of that,” she said. “Unfortunately [there is a] big snowball effect.”
SSMHealth in Madison. Photo by Kat Hans.