Work starts on mental health center for kids
Ohio’s first such facility set to open in 2025
Construction began Friday on Ohio’s first psychiatric residential treatment facility for children.
The Buckeye Ranch and Nationwide Children’s Hospital partnered to create the facility, which is set to open in Grove City in 2025, and will serve up to 48 children who fall into a current gap in care in the state between hospitalization and going back home.
The groundbreaking comes as national organizations have been raising the alarm on youth mental health for years, said Dr. David Axelson, chief of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health and the medical director of Big Lots Behavioral Health Services at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Last year, more than 8,000 kids came to the hospital for crisis services, and more than 2,000 of them were hospitalized, he said.
A group of those children – around 140 per day who are referred out of state for this care currently – need more than a stay at the hospital can offer; they need more time with providers before they can safely go home, Axelson said.
And the hospital needs the beds for other patients in need of short-term treatment.
That’s where the new facility can come in.
Seeking care closer to home
Located on the Buckeye Ranch’s existing campus, the facility will allow children to be less confined than they would be at the hospital.
They can attend school in classrooms; participate in activities like yoga, meditation, music and art therapies and more; and not be confined to their hospital room as they heal and learn the skills they need to be able to transition back home.
The new 57,000-square-foot mental health treatment facility and the renovation of two existing buildings represent a leveling-up of the care that the Buckeye Ranch can offer, said Vickie Thompson-Sandy, CEO and president of the Buckeye Ranch, a private nonprofit that offers mental, behavioral and emotional health services for children and families in central and southwest Ohio.
Right now, the campus can serve 90 children per day who need less-complex mental healthcare help, she said.
Soon, a higher level of care will be available in the new building, meant for children who have mental health needs and co-existing medical needs who are referred by doctors.
Thanks to a change in Ohio’s Medicaid coverage through a 2022 initiative called Ohio RISE, this center will fill a gap in the community when it comes to caring for children with mental illness.
Before that, this type of residential treatment, which is expensive, wasn’t covered by Medicaid, Axelson said.
Children having to seek this care out of state, away from their families, as they do currently is “uncalled for,” Thompson-Sandy said.
“I hope this will be a solution to keep kids close to home and where they are near people they love,” she said.
A growing crisis
The youth mental health crisis has been growing for years, but was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Thompson-Sandy said.
Rates of suicidal thinking and behavior in youth were up by 25% or more from similar periods in 2019, according to a 2022 report from the American Psychiatric Association.
One Ohioan under 18 dies by suicide every 33 hours, according to the Buckeye Ranch, with one in five U.S. children experiencing a mental health condition per year.
“I know that we’ll be able to treat kids and we’ll prevent deaths,” ThompsonSandy said of the new facility. “I know that kids are in crisis ... we want to be part of a solution.”
The Buckeye Ranch increased its community-based services for youth struggling with mental health in 2022, and now it hopes to ease the transition between hospitalization and home by helping kids identify triggers and cope at the new facility.
“This is Ohio’s response to preventing kids from going back into psychiatric inpatient care,” Thompson-Sandy said. “While we are blessed to have Nationwide Children’s Hospital and to have this behavioral health pavilion, because of the demand that they get, they are estimating that there are about 300 kids every year who need that care that cannot access it because other kids are reentering, coming back, taking up those hospital beds. So, this lower level of care in the community, not a hospital setting, will actually allow other kids who need a higher level of inpatient psychiatric care to access it.”
The facility is just a starting point for what the state can offer in this area, Axelson said.
“What we’re going to be providing here, this is a great start, but we also want to be realistic,” he said. “There’s still a lot more work to be done going forward.”
The expansion is funded through a combination of operations and community philanthropy, with fundraising ongoing. Those interested in contributing can learn more at www.buckeyeranch.org.