‘Next to zero warning’: Musician mental health organization must pause services for 90 days

AUSTIN (KXAN) – An organization that helps link Austin musicians with mental healthcare announced Tuesday it must pause services for 90 days while it restructures and develops a new fundraising strategy.

The SIMS Foundation has connected musicians with behavioral healthcare services for nearly 30 years. In 1995, the organization was founded to provide “low- to no-cost mental health care to local artists,” according to the SIMS Foundation.

“Over the past 30 years, SIMS Foundation has invested more than $50 [million] into mental health care services for more than 25,000 members of our music community,” a spokesperson for the foundation wrote.

“Despite operating with an extremely small staff and low overhead, public and private funding support has consistently gone down year after year, while the need for our services has risen dramatically and the healthcare landscape has evolved,” they continued.

Some clients who rely on the organization for mental health care services were surprised to learn of the sudden pause.

“On Friday, they sent an email saying we’re going to be stopping services effective November 1,” said Dean Seltzer, a local Austin musician . “That’s next to zero warning,” Seltzer said.

Seltzer spoke effusively about the SIMS Foundation saying, “I find myself in a positive mental place that I wouldn’t be in otherwise without them.” Still, he finds the timing of the pause to be challenging.

“Over the holidays – we’re going to do this over the holidays where, statistically, mental health, depression and suicide are at their worst?” Seltzer asked.

“It’s hard to say anything negative about Sims at all,” he continued. “You look at all the good they’ve done – It’s quite amazing, which has made it that much more jarring.”

The SIMS Foundation said it needs more funding in order the continue to operate in the way it has.

“It is a decision that is gut-wrenching. It is not a decision we wanted to make, but it is a decision that we had to make in order to ensure that the organization can survive and then move into thriving,” Derrick Lesnau, SIM Foundation’s CEO, told KXAN.

Lesnau said he joined the organization less than six months ago to try to help it emerge from financial hardship. He said for the last several years the organization was struggling to stay afloat.

“It’s just that hamster wheel that we continue to be on — crossing our fingers and hoping that we can go from one year to the next,” he said. “The goal is, through these changes, to no longer have hope be our only strategy.”

Lesnau said the organization’s goal over the next 90 days is to ensure no one is left without care.

“The number of times I’ve heard ‘SIMS saved my life,’ during my first four months at this organization, I can’t even count,” Lesnau added. “I want to make sure that we can continue to be here for the community for decades to come.”

SIMS Foundation said it will work with clients and providers over the next three months to minimize the impacts of the pause.

People interested in donating to the organization can do so online .

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