Your (Unofficial) Guide to State-Sponsored Therapy in Kansas

There’s a way to get affordable mental health care that you might not know about. That’s Kansas’s mental health system.

If you qualify, you can get mental health care at a community mental health center for a small co-pay or a low sliding-scale fee. But even if you don’t qualify for services at a state-funded program, your local agency can still give you information, referrals to affordable providers, and other essential help for free.

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If you’re in a hurry and want to get the most important information about what’s available in the Kansas mental health system and who it’s for, you can read our quick start guide below.

To learn more about public mental health services in Kansas, keep reading. We’ve done the research to uncover essential facts about who’s eligible, what services you can get, when to go, where to call, and how it works so you can decide if the Kansas mental health system might be right for you.

Who Is Eligible?

The Kansas public mental health system can help with a wide range of mental health needs, but you should especially consider looking into it if you (or a loved one) are having a mental health crisis, have a severe mental health condition, have Medicaid, or have a limited income.

Everyone in Kansas can use the state-funded mental health emergency response system. If you or someone you love is in crisis, you can call a state or local crisis line to get the help you need, quickly.

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Public mental health services are usually the best option if you’re having a mental health crisis and need help right away.

State mental health programs are required to provide mental health crisis response services and are one of the fastest ways to get care when you’re having a mental health emergency.

The people who answer state and local crisis lines can provide caring attention and support as they help you determine the best response to a crisis, whether it’s inpatient treatment or an appointment with a counselor.

Even if you’re not in crisis, you can call your local mental health hotline for information about affordable mental health services in your area. When you call, you can find out whether you might qualify for state-funded mental health services, schedule an assessment or intake appointment, or get free information about other affordable local providers.

While some services offered in the Kansas public mental health system have stricter eligibility requirements than others, in general, the Kansas mental health system is pretty accessible. There are no statewide eligibility criteria for public outpatient mental health services in Kansas and most Kansas CMHCs serve people with a wide range of mental health needs.

For example, Central Kansas Mental Health Center states, “Outpatient services include individual, marital, family and group therapy. The range of problems [we treat] includes minor disruptions in functioning to the more serious and long-lasting problems in life. Any age and all levels of possible problems are welcome to request treatment.”

Similarly, Pawnee Mental Health Services states that they treat “a variety of issues including difficult life events, depression and anxiety, grief and loss, past or recent trauma, overwhelming emotions, and conflictual family dynamics.” They offer services for both day-to-day issues and serious mental illness.

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You don’t have to have a serious mental illness (SMI) to get services from community mental health centers in Kansas, but some services and programs focus on people who have SMI. In addition, when demand is high or staffing is low, people with SMI are given priority admission at some CMHCs.

So, what is SMI? Serious mental illness is usually defined as a condition that causes you severe distress, limits your ability to function, makes it hard for you to live independently without support, or puts you at risk of hospitalization. Conditions that can qualify as SMI include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.

While Kansas CMHCs do not have strict eligibility criteria, they do prioritize admission for people who have limited incomes and people with serious mental illness. Available funds and staff will determine how easy it is to get admitted and whether there is a waitlist.

For example, on their website, The Guidance Center states, “We offer a broad array of home and community-based behavioral health services, always prioritizing those who are most in need without regard for their ability to pay for care.” This means when funds are limited, services for people with less severe conditions are less likely to be available.

In general, CMHC services for mild or moderate mental health needs are short-term and solution-focused. There are stricter eligibility requirements for longer-term or continuous services designed for people with severe and persistent mental illness, such as psychosocial rehabilitation.

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Community mental health centers in Kansas are great places to find specialized and intensive mental health services like case management and day treatment that can be hard to find anywhere else. These specialty programs can give you extra help when you’re dealing with severe symptoms.

While you don’t have to meet income eligibility requirements to get services at a CMHC in Kansas, you do have to meet income eligibility requirements to get state financial assistance.

In most cases, you’re only eligible for sliding-scale fees and other forms of financial assistance at a Kansas CMHC if you are a resident of the region it serves and do not have insurance that covers mental health treatment. (Most CMHCs accept a range of public and private insurance plans.)

For example, The Elizabeth Layton Center states: “Elizabeth Layton Center (ELC) offers a sliding scale fee to clients who do not have insurance and are residents of Franklin or Miami County… If a client has insurance that does not include ELC as part of their network, no sliding scale fee will be offered. The client must either pay full fee for all services or find another provider that is within their network.”

They do make exceptions if you have insurance that doesn’t cover mental health or doesn’t cover the service you need: “However, if the service is not covered by insurance due to policy exclusions, regardless of network membership status, the client may be eligible for the sliding scale fee.”

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One of the most important things to know about the Kansas mental health system is that which services are available and who’s eligible varies from program to program. In other words, what you can get depends on which CMHC serves your region. So, it’s important to check with your local CMHC to find out what’s available where you live.

You can find the number for your local CMHC in the directory below. We encourage you to call even if you think you might not be eligible.

Even if you’re not eligible, or if the program doesn’t offer the service you want, they can probably still help you. Community mental health workers are knowledgeable about local resources and will often give you free information or even referrals to other affordable providers nearby, including local non-profits that provide free or low-cost counseling.

Where Do You Call to Get Started?

The easiest way to learn more about state mental healthcare in Kansas is to call your local program directly. You can find contact information for all Kansas CMHCs and local crisis lines in the directory in the next section.

There are also many numbers you can call for help no matter where you are in Kansas. You can find the numbers for statewide helplines and hotlines in the information box directly below.

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The statewide Kansas mental health crisis hotline is 988.

The Crisis Text Line for the state of Kansas is 741741.

For help and referrals for mental health and many other needs, you can call 211.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Helpline is 1-800-950-NAMI (6264).

You can reach the non-emergency NAMI Kansas Helpline by calling (785) 214-4496.

If you just want to talk to someone, you can call the MHA of South Central Kansas Warm Line from 5PM to 11PM daily at (316) 260-2340.

You can also reach out to the MHA of the Heartland Warmline for support from 9AM to 9PM daily at (913) 281-2251 or (866) 927-6327.

You can contact the Behavioral Health Services division in the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services by calling (785) 296-3471 or (888) 582-3759.

Public mental health services in Kansas are managed on the state level by the Behavioral Health Services division of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services. For general information about the Kansas mental health system, you can contact BHS at (785) 296-3471 or (888) 582-3759.

However, you’ll probably get the best results by calling your local program directly. You can find the number for your CMHC in the directory below.

Kansas CMHC Directory

Public outpatient mental health services in Kansas are provided by community mental health centers. Some were among the first community mental health programs in the state and have been around for decades. They specialize in both outpatient and intensive community-based mental health services.

There are 105 counties in Kansas and 26 community mental health centers that serve those counties. Each CMHC has a main phone number you can call to get information about mental health services as well as a crisis line you can call to get help in a crisis.

You can find the website and contact numbers for all Kansas CMHCs, the list of which counties each CMHC serves, and the numbers for local crisis lines in the directory below.

If you need information after hours or aren’t sure whether you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, it’s okay to call a crisis line for help. The staff who answer are trained to quickly figure out what you need and can tell you what steps you need to take to connect with the right services.

Also Consider: Federally Qualified Health Centers

Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) are another great way to get affordable publicly-funded mental health services in Kansas.

These federally-funded programs provide cutting-edge care in places where good primary healthcare was once hard to find. Most provide integrated care so you can get primary medical and mental health services at the same location. Each FQHC accepts Medicaid and Medicare and offers low sliding-scale fees if you don’t have insurance.

You can search for FQHCs near you by using the online search tool on the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration website.

Troubleshooting Guide

The state mental health system is complicated and can be confusing to navigate. If you’re having any issues, we’re here to help. Here are some of our solutions to common problems you might experience.

If you’ve run into a problem that we haven’t addressed, don’t give up. Call someone at the program (or a state or local mental health hotline) and tell them what’s going on.

You’re much more likely to get the help you need when you advocate for yourself and are persistent. Tell the person you talk to what you need or what problem you’re having.

If they don’t help the first time, call them back and tell them. If you keep calling and keep calm and focused, you should eventually get through to someone who can help you.

Deep Dive: How Does the System Work?

To understand Kansas’s mental health system, it helps to understand how it started and how it’s changed since then.

Public mental health services have been around for a surprisingly long time. But for over a hundred years in America, the only way to get them was in a psychiatric hospital.

In the 1960s, Americans started thinking differently about mental health care. Conditions in psychiatric hospitals were getting worse and new medications made it possible to provide mental health treatment on an outpatient basis.

In response, new laws were passed that required state and local governments to establish community mental health programs as alternatives to institutionalization for people with serious mental illness. The most important was the Community Mental Health Act, which President John F. Kennedy signed into law in 1963.

DEEP DIVE

To learn more about what the public mental health system was like in the early days—and how psychiatric inpatient care has evolved since then—you can read our article “Do Insane Asylums Still Exist? The Surprising Past and Present.”

To learn more about what inpatient mental health treatment is like now, and the differences between how it works in general hospitals and specialized psychiatric facilities, you can read our article “How Inpatient Mental Health Treatment Works.”

Many state mental health programs trace their origins back to the 1960s when these important changes started to happen.

Kansas was a little ahead of the curve. It founded many of the programs that would later become CMHCs in the 1950s. One was even founded in 1937 as a child guidance clinic before transitioning to all-ages mental health care during the community mental health movement.

In the 1960s, Kansas started building a statewide network of CMHCs in earnest using funds created by the 1963 federal Community Mental Health Centers Act. Kansas now has 26 community mental health centers with various satellite locations across the state.

However, while Kansas was ahead of the curve in building community mental health programs, it was behind the curve in transitioning away from institutional care. Kansas continued to rely primarily on its state psychiatric hospitals for public mental health care until it passed the Mental Health Reform Act in 1990. But even after the reform law was passed and several state hospitals were closed in the 1990s, Kansas continued to spend more on institutional care than it spent on community-based care.

DEEP DIVE

Public mental health services in Kansas are managed on the state level by the Behavioral Health Services division in the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services.

In addition to operating the state’s two psychiatric hospitals at Larned and Osawatomie, KDADS oversees and licenses a network of mental health programs including nursing facilities for mental health and community mental health centers.

There are currently 26 CMHCs in Kansas, all of which are independent non-profits managed and licensed by KDADS. They provide crisis, outpatient, and specialty mental health services to people in their catchment areas.

Kansas significantly cut funding for community-based mental health services in the late 2000s and 2010s. This led to systemic crises including overcrowding at state hospitals and service reductions at community mental health centers.

In response to the consistently low ranking for Kansas’s public mental health system, advocacy groups and state citizens pushed for restored funding to CMHCs and other improvements to the state mental health system.

Their efforts paid off. The Kansas state government has significantly increased state mental health funding over the last few years. Kansas is using these funds to expand services at community mental health centers so that they meet the federal criteria to be designated as certified community behavioral health clinics.

Kansas is also using the money to improve its mental health crisis response system. It is building a new state psychiatric hospital and increasing capacity at existing hospitals. It launched the statewide 988 crisis line in 2022 and is expanding mobile crisis services across the state.

You can use these new state services to get the help you need. If you’re in crisis or need mental health care and aren’t sure what to do, you can call 988 or a local crisis line—the people who answer know how the system works and will help you get where you need to go.

Conclusion

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, only 50 percent of people in Kansas who have mental health conditions get treatment for them. Many of them qualify for public mental health services but don’t know about them.

You can make a difference by reaching out and connecting with local mental health resources to get the care you need. If you’re not sure whether you qualify for Kansas state mental health services, call your local program or a state or local mental health hotline. You may find out you can get mental health services at your local CMHC or that there’s another affordable option nearby.

The most important thing is to get started—the help you need may be only a call or click away.

Are You Thinking of Online Therapy? Start Here to Get Matched with a Licensed Therapist Right For You.

Therapy with No Waiting Rooms or Driving. Take a quick quiz about your preferences and needs and get matched to a therapist in as little as 48 hours.

Your (Unofficial) Guide to State-Sponsored Therapy in Kansas

Are You Thinking of Online Therapy? Start Here to Get Matched with a Licensed Therapist Right For You.

Have you been in therapy before?

Quick Start Guide

Who Is Eligible?

PRO TIP

Use the State System When You're in Crisis

PRO TIP

What Is Serious Mental Illness?

PRO TIP

Check Out the State System If You Need Specialized Services

PRO TIP

Check with Your CMHC for Accurate Local Eligibility Information

Where Do You Call to Get Started?

PRO TIP

Important Numbers in Kansas

Kansas CMHC Directory

Kansas Clinics and Crisis Lines

North and Northwest Kansas Clinics and Crisis Lines

Northeast Kansas Clinics and Crisis Lines

Kansas City Metro Region Clinics and Crisis Lines

Southwest Kansas Clinics and Crisis Lines

South Central Kansas Clinics and Crisis Lines

Southeast Kansas Clinics and Crisis Lines

Also Consider: Federally Qualified Health Centers

Troubleshooting Guide

Problems and Solutions

Deep Dive: How Does the System Work?

DEEP DIVE

For More Information

DEEP DIVE

What Is the Structure of the Kansas Mental Health System?

Conclusion

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