Melissa Pappas, a licensed clinical professional counselor with Rosecrance, is shown Tuesday on a couch in The Living Room, the agency’s new drop-in facility in for people in crisis, at its building at 801 N. Walnut St., C.

CHAMPAIGN — You can’t afford your rent. Your boyfriend left you. Or, maybe, as the pandemic drags on, you’ve lost all hope that life will ever feel normal again.

Whatever it is that’s making you feel anxious, depressed or afraid, Melissa Pappas is here to tell you there’s no problem too small to bring to The Living Room.

The Living Room, opened recently in Champaign by the mental- and behavioral-health agency Rosecrance, is intended to be a safe and quiet respite for people in the midst of emotional distress.

Located inside Rosecrance’s building at 801 N. Walnut St., C, it looks just like its name — deliberately comfortable and non-clinical.

It’s furnished with couches, a coffee table, bookshelves and soft-light lamp — and it’s staffed with two professionals who are there to listen and, when needed, help refer people to community services that can help them after they leave.

It’s also free. A grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration is covering the cost.

Rosecrance already has a well-established Living Room program in Winnebago County and opened the Champaign location in mid-January, said Pappas, a licensed clinical professional counselor who is overseeing the program.

For some people, what’s needed is just somebody to listen, she said.

“They walk in, and they’re treated with compassion,” she said.

For some struggling with a mental-health or substance-abuse issue, coming to The Living Room can be taking that difficult first step of seeking help, Pappas said.

“I like to think of it as putting a toe in the water,” she said.

The Living Room isn’t a crisis center, Pappas said, but it is intended to address issues before people experience anxiety or depression or despair to the level that they turn to hospital emergency rooms.

Dr. Kurt Bloomstrand, regional EMS medical director for OSF HealthCare, said OSF’s hospital emergency rooms in Urbana and Danville see a fair share of patients experiencing mental-health crises. But since the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve seen even more.

The pandemic has both exacerbated mental-health issues people already had and created new ones as people have experienced more stress, isolation and fear, he said.

“All these factors come to a boiling point,” Bloomstrand said.

While the hospitals are equipped to provide help for these patients, mental-health cases can take more time than medical emergencies, and resources are limited for both inpatient and outpatient mental-health care, he said — so The Living Room could be a game changer in helping de-escalate issues before they become crises.

Any opportunity to increase mental-health resources in the community is “very beneficial,” he said.

The Living room is open every weekday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

People arriving at the Walnut Street building are asked to ring the doorbell on the south side of the building and sign in, Pappas said. They’ll also be asked to sign out and answer a question before they leave: Do they feel any better than when they walked in?

The average stay has been about 90 minutes, Pappas said.

For those who might hesitate to drop by, she said, “I would say there is no problem that is silly. There is no problem that is small. There is no judgment of problems. We are here for solutions.”

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