Updated June 16 at 2:29 p.m.
With construction expected to begin this summer on a new pediatric mental health wing, officials at Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas in Austin’s Mueller area say the addition will help streamline mental health care for children.
But opening the 24-bed Grace Grego Maxwell Mental Health Unit, which is anticipated to happen in spring 2018, will also be the first step toward better integration of mental health treatment and other services offered by Dell Children’s, said Deb Brown, the hospital’s vice president of patient care services and chief operating officer.
“This is just the beginning,” Brown said. “There’s a lot more potential and a lot more vision for the mental health program at Dell Children’s.”
Seton Healthcare Family, the hospital’s operator, announced the addition of the new wing in January along with a $3 million matching challenge gift from the family of Nyle Maxwell, a former Round Rock mayor and founding chairman of the Dell Children’s Medical Center Foundation, and his wife, Nancy. The new unit is named after Nyle Maxwell’s mother, who is a longtime Dell Children’s volunteer.
Brown said design work has been completed, and Dell Children’s officials hope to begin construction by mid- to late July. The renovation is expected to cost about $7 million, which will be covered by donations and by additional investment from Seton.
The unit will be located on the second floor of the hospital’s south tower. It will take the place of an inpatient rehabilitation department that will move to the tower’s third floor.
Much of the remodeling will involve converting single-occupancy inpatient rooms to double-occupancy and ensuring the rooms meet safety regulations for inpatient mental health treatment, Brown said.
The unit will include the Texas Child Study Center, an outpatient clinic run in partnership with The University of Texas Department of Educational Psychology. It will also feature patient-support spaces, including group activity areas as well as secluded rooms, along with an enclosed, outdoor healing garden, said Liz Stacy, a project coordinator.
According to estimates from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy organization focused on mental health-related issues, about one in five children experience some form of mental illness, but only about half receive treatment.
Among those ages 12-17 in Travis County, suicide is now the second-leading cause of death, according to Austin-based Integral Care, which provides behavioral health and developmental disability services.
Dell Children’s child and adolescent psychiatrists anticipate they will treat a variety of conditions, including eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder, according to Seton.
Bringing mental health treatment into the same facility where children receive a variety of other emergency and specialty pediatric medical services will go a long way to streamlining care and making the system easier for families to navigate, Brown said.
“Today, kids may come to our emergency department, they may go to an adult facility, they may be seen by a school counselor, they may be seen by their primary care physician—they enter our system in so many different ways,” Brown said. “It makes all the sense in the world to have all of these services come together here within Dell Children’s hospital.”
Karen Ranus, executive director of NAMI Austin, said combining pediatric mental health care and other medical services under one roof will be a great benefit for children in need of psychiatric care.
“I think it’s so important as our community moves forward that we continue to look for opportunities to integrate this care [and] that we recognize that these are brain-based, biological disorders,” Ranus said. “We need to be providing this care in the same place that we are providing care for other health issues.”
Families with children living with mental illness face a range of challenges, Ranus said. One common difficultly for children is receiving an accurate diagnosis, something that can be worsened by a lack of access to treatment, she said.
“That’s the tricky part,” Ranus said. “Mental health disorders are not always really simple to diagnose because they’re based on behavior.”
NAMI Austin offers free, six-week classes for parents and caregivers of children who have been diagnosed with a mental illness or those who experience behavioral or mental health trouble, Ranus said.
Participants learn how to navigate the health care system and receive training on communication and tracking medications and treatments, Ranus said.
“What we’re trying to do is create confident and resilient families by providing them with some solid education and support so as they’re moving forward and navigating all these challenging situations, they’ve got some good tools to use,” Ranus said.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the new Dell Children's mental health unit would not increase bed capacity dedicated to inpatient pediatric mental health care within Seton Healthcare Family.
