Analysis of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Chicago HelpLine Referral Data (2019-2020)

Abstract

Purpose: NAMI Chicago has a HelpLine for those who wish to contact them with mental health & wellness needs.1 There is a lot of data that is logged regarding these calls, and a lot of it is being analyzed already; however, there is an area in which analysis is definitely still needed, specifically with respect to resource connections, i.e., referrals. In other words, data pertains to what happens after a caller interfaces with the NAMI Chicago HelpLine & is directed toward a resource. In some cases, there are specific follow-ups by NAMI Chicago that happen. The objective is to provide quality assurance program evaluation and feedback to NAMI Chicago about using de-identified call data to analyze their processes: potential areas at the outset included barriers to referrals, facilitators, areas for improvement, etc. Procedures: The purpose of this research is quality assurance around barriers to follow-up identified by NAMI Chicago call center responders and to assess the frequency of the most typical barriers. NAMI Chicago provides telephone referrals to callers seeking mental health services throughout the Chicago area. It was estimated that 13,000 calls were fielded by NAMI in 2020 and an analysis of the barriers experienced by callers seeking referrals to mental health services will help NAMI improve services to people in the community. This analysis has ended up examining calls placed across all of 2019, as well as all of 2020.

Acknowledgements

Thank you for the wonderful help by Joe, as well as the opportunity to work with the dataset and Jim, the advisor team. I also received R assistance (they did not view dataset), from connections I have who are skilled with R and/or Excel: George Abitante, Felix Angelov, Scarlett Wardrop.

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