Akron Children's Hospital has opened an expanded in-patient behavioral health unit on the fifth floor of the Kay Jewelers Pavilion, growing from 24 beds to as many as 30, with the ability to flex up to 40 beds if demand requires it. The 50,000-square-foot space replaces the hospital's former unit on the eighth floor of the main building and arrives as pediatric behavioral health crises continue climbing across the region.
The hospital reported that more than 4,500 youth were seen in its emergency department for behavioral health concerns over the past year, according to a hospital news release cited by Cleveland.com. The unit serves patients ages 5 to 18 through tiered hospitalization programming, and Akron Children's primary care offices now also offer mental health therapists on-site as behavioral health concerns show up in a share of pediatric primary care visits, the hospital said in its release.
Eva Szigethy, chair of pediatric psychiatry at Akron Children's, said in the release that the new unit will expand inpatient behavioral healthcare capacity and reshape how care is delivered. Jason Spivey Sr., the hospital's vice chair of behavioral health, is also leading the clinical push behind the expanded footprint, per the same release.
Inside the New Fifth-Floor Space
Each patient admitted to the unit is assigned to a regular acute care unit, a high acute care unit, or a crisis stabilization unit depending on their diagnosis and support needs. The crisis stabilization pathway is designed for emergency-room patients who do not require a lengthy hospital stay, with hospitalizations there averaging three to four days as children and families work on crisis management skills before returning home. That track also allows parents to stay with their children and take part directly in therapy sessions.
According to project records from general contractor Summit Construction, the buildout included a 4,800-square-foot outdoor courtyard renovation alongside gross-motor therapy spaces, art areas, classrooms, sensory rooms, and private patient rooms with full bathrooms. Cleveland.com's report notes the space also includes a multimedia room, a gym for group activities and exercise, and a sensory stimulation room, all built around therapeutic architecture using color and natural light intended to reduce stress and promote healing.
A $21 Million Bet on Rising Demand
The project carried a $21 million price tag and was designed by CannonDesign, according to Crain's Cleveland Business. It sits inside the Kay Jewelers Pavilion, a 380,000-square-foot critical care tower that opened in 2015 and separately completed a $6.5 million project last September adding a dedicated Heart Unit and expanding its Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to 47,000 square feet.
Akron Children's has said the expansion is driven by increasing demand for pediatric behavioral health services, a demand borne out by regional and state data. The hospital's Community Health Needs Assessment found Stark County recorded the second-highest rate of behavioral health diagnoses across its six-county service region while also having the lowest rate of practicing child and adolescent psychiatrists. Statewide, the Health Policy Institute of Ohio reported that 35% of Ohio high school students described persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2023, up from 26% a decade earlier, while nearly 12% of Ohio youth ages 3 to 17 were diagnosed with anxiety in 2021-2022 compared to 10% nationally.
A National Pattern, With Local Stakes
Researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital, publishing in Pediatrics, found that while overall pediatric emergency department visits stayed stable over a 10-year period, youth ED visits for mental health disorders jumped 60% nationwide and visits for deliberate self-harm rose 329%. Ohio's crisis infrastructure has also grown alongside that trend: the state's 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline has answered more than 600,000 contacts since launching in July 2022, prompting the state to contract with a dozen regional providers to expand Mobile Response and Stabilization Services for youth statewide.
Before reaching inpatient beds, youth in crisis at Akron Children's first pass through a main campus emergency department that includes five dedicated behavioral health rooms engineered with muted colors and safety features meant to minimize anxiety. That intake pipeline now feeds into a facility built specifically to handle the volume the hospital has been seeing.
The behavioral health expansion lands amid a broader wave of investment at Akron Children's. In April, philanthropist Tom Golisano and The Golisano Foundation donated $50 million to the health system, the largest gift in its history, prompting the Akron campus to be renamed Akron Children's Golisano. The hospital has also been expanding into suburban Cuyahoga County and moving into Stark County women's health, part of a wider pattern of growth across a system that also functions as one of just five Level I Pediatric Trauma Centers in Ohio.
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