LYNN - Nearly four decades ago, Stephen Hayes was a liberal-minded psychologist fresh out of graduate school and eager to redefine how mental health services were delivered in Massachusetts.

In 1971, armed with a master’s degree, he became a consultant to what was then known as the Lynn Model Cities Health and Counseling Center, tucked into 900 square feet of storefront office space near the corner of Essex and Chestnut streets. The following year, he joined the health center staff, where he continues to work as chief behavioral health officer at what’s now known as the Lynn Community Health Center.

Over the past 38 years, plenty has changed both in the city and in the field of mental health.

Hayes, 62, who lives in Salem with his wife, Clare, and two adult sons — Steve and Jared — now holds a doctoral degree, is a licensed clinical psychologist, and a board-certified psychoanalyst. He looks back fondly on those early days in Lynn, when Richard Nixon was President and the Vietnam War was still raging, tearing the nation apart. More so, he gazes toward the future, knowing the health center will face many more new challenges n and he awaits the opportunity to confront them.

“They’re going to have to carry me out of here with my respirator,” Hayes jovially announced during a recent interview in his third-floor corner office at 23 Central St., with its sweeping views of Central Square and the Munroe Street business corridor. “We’re still doing good work, still accomplishing the mission we started out on back in 1971.”

Today’s health center serves approximately 35,000 patients, or one in every three Lynn residents. Of those patients, about 3,500 receive mental health services.

With a headquarters at 269 Union St., the health center supports a satellite medical office in West Lynn, six school-based clinics, a pharmacy, a dental clinic and other facilities, for a total of 13 sites. The non-profit organization offers a wide array of services, including primary medical care, and partners with specialists from North Shore Medical Center. A third of the staff is bilingual, an important asset in a city where Spanish is widely spoken, but patients communicate in 22 different languages. The latest waves of immigration are from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as war torn African regions, including the Sudan and Somalia. Lynn is now home to more than 200 Bantu families, many of whom were treated poorly as lower-class natives in Somalia.

“When we first started up, the medical community in Lynn was threatened by our presence, the arrival of an alternative medical service. In fact, we were told that if we hired a physician, that person would not be given privileges at the hospital,” Hayes recalled. “But we had free rein to set up mental health services because nobody else was doing that. And at the time, a Ralph Nader report indicated that de-institutionalization was not working.”

Shortly before coming to Lynn, Hayes worked at the former Danvers State Hospital, so he was familiar with its patient population. “We set up a bridge clinic at Lynn Hospital to follow those patients who were discharged,” he said. “There was inadequate housing for them - lots of rooming houses with no supervision. The communities were just not prepared for the impact of de-institutionalization. Domestic violence was and still is a big issue, but you didn’t have the heroin and cocaine problem that we have today. People used alcohol and more chemical or psychedelic drugs, where today we see multiple addictions to poly substances.”

When the Lynn health center was first conceived, services were free, appointments unnecessary, and the doors were open six days a week until 8 p.m.

“We had an open-door policy. We believed strongly that health care should be free to the community. I was a young whipper-snapper with a master’s degree from Assumption College, and Bill Mantzoukis was the health center’s first director,” he said, referring to the current owner of North Shore nursing homes. “Bill hired me and together we set up the mental health program. So there we were, two liberals parachuting in to start a program in mental health, ironically with Nixon money because it was a federal program.”

The makeshift storefront clinic serviced thousands of clients before it expanded into new quarters, but the magnitude of the problems mushroomed as well.

“There are more cultural issues and language barriers today,” Hayes said. “In many countries, there’s no such thing as mental health care, so when new immigrants arrive, what they encounter is a completely new way of looking at things.”

Hayes said the health center benefited immensely in the late 1980s when, using a short-lived government grant, it hired a Cambodian physician who spoke English and had been working in New York with traumatized refugees. Such expertise was just what Lynn needed. Although many of the Cambodian war refugees living in Lynn were reluctant to visit the health clinic, that attitude changed when one of the revered monks from their insular community got pneumonia.

The monk, grateful for the medical care, blessed the clinic, which made it an acceptable place for the refugees who were no longer suspect.

The health center now has 40 behavioral health staff members and 12 trainees.

“We go to the city’s homeless shelter and we also have the school-based mental health clinics. You can’t provide mental health services in a vacuum,” Hayes said. “You also have to take a look at the patient’s nutritional and medical needs. You have to look holistically at the whole patient.”

In a more recent development, the health center is moving toward alternative medicine as yet another option for some patients, such as acupuncture.

“I’m still very energized by what goes on here and thankful that I’m part of it,” he said.

When not at the health center, Hayes takes his family winter skiing, boating on the North Shore, and abroad to explore the culinary delights of different cultures, especially Italy.

As he succinctly put it, “I like to eat.”