Welcome to the Most Comprehensive and Searchable
Online Directory of LGBTQ Services for Chicagoland!

This website is made possible through the generous support and funding from the Adler University in which the LGBTQ Mental Health and Inclusion Center resides. The LGBTQ Mental Health and Inclusion Center’s mission is a leader in educating and training culturally-competent practitioners in social justice and service delivery for gender and sexual minorities.

The searchable online website idea came from the constant struggle of finding up-to-date resources for LGBTQ clients in my clinical care. This involved a lot of hours collecting flyers, searching online, printing, and condensing those items into a single document. The first such one I encountered was Brady’s List put together by Dr. Braden Berkey. It was an exceptionally helpful prototype, but a time-consuming one to update. It was time to change that, and “Hey Presto!”, the idea of this community-service project for the LGBTQ Mental Health and Inclusion Center came to fruition.

Our students at the Adler University are required to participate in a Community Service Practicum (CSP) during their first year. The CSP is designed to give our students the experience of learning about social disparities and then advocating for social change. The services listed on this website will be vetted throughout the year by student workers. They will be exposed to the services available to gender and sexual minorities while exploring why there is the need for these services in the first place, where there are gaps in service, and why those gaps exist. In addition to our CSP students, the website requires the time and efforts of work-study students and myself. Please visit our Donation page to help us keep this directory running and current.

I want to thank and acknowledge Victoria Halsted and Jamal Cunningham for their work in creating the website and getting it out of the starting gate for their CSP, and Paul Collins and the Information Technology Team at the Adler School for all of their extra hours of work and consultation on making this website a reality. I am eternally grateful to you all.

Thank you so much for your interest in our website, and I hope you find it of tremendous service.  If you have suggestions for improvement, or general feedback, please email us at lgbtqcenter@adler.edu.

All my best to you,
Kevin

Kevin A. Osten-Garner, Psy.D.
Founding Director; LGBTQ Mental Health and Inclusion Center