Officials took part Feb. 22 in a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Adolescent Psychiatric Facility and Behavioral Health Services Center linked to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (VMC). The center will provide first inpatient hospital beds for kids and teens in mental health crisis in Santa Clara County. Pictured from left are VMC CEO Paul Lorenz; Santa Clara County Supervisors Susan Ellenberg, Joe Simitian and Cindy Chavez; Rovina Nimbalkar, executive director of National Alliance on Mental Illness Santa Clara; Sherri Terao, director of the Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Services Department; and Michael Elliott, president and executive director of the VMC Foundation. (Courtesy photo)
Officials broke ground Feb. 22 on a facility that will provide the first inpatient hospital beds for kids and teens in mental health crisis in Santa Clara County.
The three-story Adolescent Psychiatric Facility and Behavioral Health Services Center – linked to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (VMC) – will provide inpatient hospital care as well as emergency and outpatient psychiatric services for children, adolescents and adults.
This 207,000-square-foot facility will feature divided age-appropriate amenities, including indoor and outdoor therapeutic environments, that allow for a continuum of care in a single setting.
The project – part of a new center for behavioral health services – was sparked by a comment Sigrid Pinsky, a member of the county’s Behavioral Health Board, made to County Supervisor Joe Simitian in 2014 about the lack of beds for young people with mental health issues. Now, more than eight years later, after a what Simitian calls “painful” delays, construction has begun.
“Youth mental health needs were critical and mostly unmet in 2014 when I talked to Joe about the lack of beds in our county. The mental health crisis is worse now,” Pinsky said in a statement. “It is tremendously satisfying that our county will soon be able to properly serve the hundreds of youth struggling with mental health challenges and make the stressful situation more manageable for their families.”
Simitian said he proposed developing the center after learning that each year several hundred young people were transferred from county emergency rooms to hospitals as far as 100 miles away for acute psychiatric care. When youth are diagnosed as being a danger to themselves or others, they are placed on an involuntary 72-hour hold and transferred to the nearest inpatient facility. Because of liability and safety protocols, parents are often not allowed to drive their children and must wait for ambulance transport.
“Way too many of our kids are being hospitalized for psychiatric emergencies outside the county. Separating these kids from their families at one of the toughest times in their lives, that’s just hell on them,” Simitian said in a statement. “I’m also worried that the specter of long-distance treatment could deter kids and families from seeking the help they need in the first place.”
In 2018, at Simitian’s request, the county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved development of the facility, which will also consolidate adult behavioral health services that were scattered throughout the VMC campus.
The county currently contracts with San Jose Behavioral Health to serve a limited number of teens ages 14-17. “It’s far from what is needed to meet the demand, and doesn’t offer anything for younger kids,” said Simitian, noting also that the psychiatric facility is in South San Jose, “far removed from significant portions of the county.”
The new facility replaces the 50-year-old Don Lowe Pavilion, which has housed adult Emergency Psychiatric Services and Mental Health Urgent Care for 50 years. The center will have 21 beds and an outdoor terrace for patients ages 13-17 years. Children 12 and younger have a separate unit with 14 beds and their own outdoor space. There will be 42 beds and two tree-screened outdoor terraces for adult inpatient care.
Emergency psychiatric services will be located on the ground level, along with a shared pharmacy and divided outpatient urgent care for minors and adults. A rooftop recreation space will include a basketball court.
All of the center’s services will share resources such as professional staff, support staff and storage. A skyway linked to VMC’s emergency department will allow patients who have co-occurring medical issues to be treated on site.
The county expects local health care providers to refer children and adolescents to the new center, scheduled to open in late 2015.
Originally published at Anne Gelhaus