Families in Spartanburg who once had to drive hours away to find an inpatient psychiatric bed for a child in crisis now have another option close to home. Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System announced Thursday the opening of a new adolescent behavioral health unit at Spartanburg Medical Center's Mary Black Campus, built specifically for young patients experiencing behavioral health crises that require inpatient treatment.
The unit is staffed by a multidisciplinary team that includes child- and adolescent-trained psychiatrists, according to FOX Carolina. Its purpose is to stabilize young patients before connecting them with ongoing outpatient and community-based support, rather than keeping them in a hospital setting any longer than necessary. Chanda Flynn told the station that families have had to travel long distances for inpatient behavioral health care for their children, a gap the new unit is meant to close.
A Foundation-Funded Push to Keep Kids Out of the ER
The new inpatient unit builds on earlier work by the Spartanburg Regional Foundation, which funded the creation of a separate unit within Spartanburg Medical Center's Emergency Center for young patients in acute crisis, according to discoverhealth.org. That emergency-center space includes patient rooms, a nurses' station and a communal area designed to feel calm and comforting rather than clinical, the outlet reports.
Alongside that physical space, the system also operates the Child and Adolescent Family Engagement Center, known as the CAFÉ, which screens young patients and provides care before determining whether emergency services are actually needed. The CAFÉ has become the first point of contact for children with non-life-threatening mental health concerns, per the same account, and has provided immediate intervention while keeping many adolescents out of the emergency room altogether. Community leaders, schools and mental health providers have also worked together on behavioral-threat assessments, management processes and suicide screenings to standardize how kids get referred for help.
24/7 Emergency Behavioral Health Services Already in Place
Separate from the new inpatient unit, Spartanburg Regional already runs an Emergency Center Behavioral Health Unit that provides services 24 hours a day, seven days a week for anyone experiencing a mental health crisis, according to Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System. That team assesses patients through evaluation and observation and coordinates care by referring them to outpatient or acute inpatient services as necessary.
The push to expand youth mental health infrastructure in Spartanburg comes as local researchers dig into what is driving the need. A report from Strategic Spartanburg set out to understand the factors contributing to sadness, suicidal ideation and poor mental health among adolescents in Spartanburg County, combining focus groups and statistical analyses to identify risk and protective factors. Statewide, the Youth Access to Psychiatry Program also offers a free provider-to-provider psychiatric consultation line through the South Carolina Department of Mental Health, giving pediatricians another avenue to connect kids with specialists.
A Similar Gap Closed Recently in Hendersonville
Spartanburg is not the only Upstate-adjacent community investing in this kind of care. UNC Health Pardee opened its own Adolescent Behavioral Health Center inside Pardee Hospital in Hendersonville in September, accepting children ages 13 to 17 at its 23-bed facility, according to BlueRidgeNow. That center was described as filling the “missing middle” of youth mental health care between outpatient services and emergency departments, and it treated 12 patients in just over a week after opening.
The Pardee center's recovery model focuses on symptom stabilization, emotional regulation, crisis intervention and helping kids develop healthy coping strategies, the outlet reported. It was developed with a $30 million grant from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, in partnership with Vaya Health and the UNC School of Medicine. The two projects, though in different states, point to a broader regional recognition that teenagers in crisis need options beyond a standard hospital emergency room.
For Spartanburg families, the goal of the new Mary Black Campus unit is straightforward: give adolescents in crisis a place to stabilize close to home, then connect them to the outpatient and community-based support that can help over the longer term.
