General News
Cape Fear Valley Health broke ground on a new inpatient psychiatric unit for adolescents today. The new facility is located on the campus of Central Harnett Hospital at 215 Brightwater Drive, Lillington. About 70 people attended the ceremony, which included comments from N.C. Senator Jim Burgin and Kelly Crosbie, the director of the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
The one-story, 8,850-square-foot building will include 16 inpatient beds and is estimated to be completed by December. It is designed specifically to provide help to psychiatric patients ages 12 to 17 and their families. The construction will cost $8.4 million, funded by the Dorothea Dix Hospital Property Fund and the State Capital and Infrastructure Fund. The facility will mirror one Cape Fear Valley Health opened in Fayetteville in 2022.
“Since we opened the Dorothea Dix Adolescent Care Unit in Fayetteville, we’ve seen how a facility like this can transform behavioral health for adolescents,” said Cape Fear Valley Health Chief Executive Officer Michael Nagowski. “We’re excited to bring the same model of care here and I promise it will probably be full the day it opens.”
Corporate Director of Psychiatric Services John Bigger said that adding this new facility in Lillington will serve families in the surrounding region, which includes Ft. Liberty, Fayetteville and Raleigh.
“Providing this unit at Central Harnett Hospital allows families much closer access to care and affords them the opportunity to be more connected with their children,” Bigger said. “The unit also affords families from other nearby communities the opportunity to receive care in a central location with easy access to nearby highways and resources.”
Children in crisis and their families typically must wait in the emergency room until a bed is available at an adolescent psychiatric treatment facility in North Carolina. During an adolescent’s short-term stay, which is usually three to five days, they will participate in individual, group, and/or family counseling with a focus on evidence-based adaptive skill building as a foundation for successful reintegration into the community.
A critical component will be providing services as needed to identify underlying issues and making evidence-based recommendations that will impact future treatment. A secondary goal of the unit is to assist the youth and/or their families with accessing support services that will continue to help the adolescent in improving overall functioning within their home or community setting.
“This is going to help keep kids out of our Emergency Department and get them the help they need,” Bigger said.
The new state-of-the-art facility will be equipped with psychotherapy staff, psychiatrists, recreational therapists, and others to support the critical components of evidence-based treatment for adolescents.
Burgin said that every day, there are always anywhere from 50 to 170 children in hospitals across the state who are under an involuntary hold in an Emergency Room because they are waiting for space in a behavioral health facility.
“The emergency room is not the best place for youth in mental health crisis,” Burgin said. “I think this is going to be a great opportunity for the young people here, to help them deal with issues and to go forward.”
Crosbie praised partnerships like this one, between state and local government leadership and local healthcare providers, which lead to successful projects like this.
“Healthcare is very local; mental healthcare is very local,” Crosbie said. “We say psychiatry and psychiatric illness and it sounds scary, but really these are just children who are hurting, and they’re your family and your neighbors. And it’s a gift to be able to give them a wonderful clean, well-lighted, therapeutic clinical space, so I’m really honored to be here today with you all.”
