County's new psychiatric hospital in San Jose opens Nov. 3 with dedicated beds for children and teens

Children and teenagers in Santa Clara County who need inpatient psychiatric care will be able to get it closer to home starting next week.

The county celebrated the opening Monday of its Behavioral Health Pavilion on the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center campus in San Jose, and the building begins seeing patients Nov. 3, San José Spotlight reported in a story republished by Palo Alto Online.

The three-story, 207,000-square-foot hospital cost $470 million and has 77 beds. Fourteen are set aside for children 12 and under and 21 for teens, in a part of the building kept separate from a secure 42-bed adult unit that will replace the county's existing adult facility. The youth side will offer inpatient and outpatient psychiatric and medical care, emergency psychiatric services and urgent care.

A skywalk is planned to link the building with medical services elsewhere on the campus, and the design includes outdoor space with a basketball court.

Why it was built

County statistics cited by the Spotlight show about 375 children a year need acute psychiatric care, and 65% of them have had to be taken to hospitals outside the county, in places such as Sacramento, Vallejo and Santa Rosa, because local beds were not available. Apart from the new pavilion, San Jose Behavioral Health has 34 beds for teenagers.

Former Supervisor Joe Simitian, who pushed for the project with former Supervisor Cindy Chavez, told the Spotlight he learned in 2015 that the county had no psychiatric beds for young patients. Supervisors approved the building in 2017 with a 2023 target, but construction problems pushed the schedule back and some policymakers questioned the cost.

In 2022, Supervisors Susan Ellenberg and Otto Lee declared a mental health crisis over the shortage of acute psychiatric beds.

"It's an extraordinary facility, and the vision that I had back in the day has now been realized," Simitian said.

Demand keeps rising

Dr. Kristoffer Strauss, medical director of acute psychiatric services at the medical center, said the number of adults seeking psychiatric care has grown every year and their conditions have become more severe. Because the hospital is a receiving center, more young patients have arrived over the past year too, even without a unit built for them.

"We have to put them in a separate unit that frankly, is not therapeutic," Strauss said. He added that the need "is still not being met" by the services available in the county.

Speaking at Monday's opening, Ellenberg said young people with both psychiatric and medical problems have too often bounced between separate systems, none of them built to care for the whole person. She called the building "one of the strongest signs of hope for our county."

Sources

paloaltoonline.com