COLUMBUS, Ohio — Columbus City Council voted Monday to allocate $4.5 million toward the Franklin County Crisis Care Center.
The facility is the brainchild of the Alcohol Drug and Mental Health Board of Franklin County (ADAMH). Its goal is to create alternative crisis response spaces for adults in need in Columbus.
According to ADAMH, 30,000 mental health crisis episodes are treated in Franklin County hospitals annually. With the city’s expected population growth, city officials want to create something big to address the community’s need for an alternative crisis response.
“You need to make sure that there is a place that if we have a resident who has experienced an episode, that there's a place that we can go, that we're not just engaging with somebody and then leaving them or access being an issue,” said Shannon Hardin, City Council president.
Officials said this new crisis care facility will have more of a living room model approach, which is less hospital-focused and more recovery-focused with more trauma-informed care. Staff will include people who have experienced either mental health or addiction related crises.
“Well, this has been in the making for probably about ten years. This is something the community came together to discuss. What would be a solution for behavioral health crisis care. You know, those partners included people who live with crisis, with mental health, with substance use disorder, and their family members and loved ones,” said ADAMH Senior Director of Provider Relations, Meg Griffing.
While this project has been in the works for a while, the impact of the pandemic has made the need that much more urgent.
“We saw so much of an increase just based on isolation, increased substance use, increasing suicide in certain demographics, our young people especially. And so it seemed now more than ever, it's also been great to see some stigma being reduced,” said Griffing.
Project lead Johnathan Thomas said he learned a lot from Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s behavioral health efforts and hopes this new facility will be just as effective for adults.
“And in terms of how it relates to the crisis care center, specifically Nationwide Children's Behavioral Health Pavilion, we learned a lot about their approach to designing that building, how it really reduces the stigma around behavioral health care for children and families. And we believe this facility will do that for adults,” said Johnathan Thomas.
When the facility opens, it expects to be able to treat 80 adults at a time. And patients won’t need insurance in order to be treated. It is expected to open by spring 2025.