LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Kentucky Children's Hospital is adding 17 inpatient spaces to meet the needs of more young people who have specific mental and behavioral health needs.
The space was originally located at Good Samaritan Hospital. Dr. Amy Meadows, the chief of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry, says the need for pediatric mental health care is on the rise.
Dr. Meadows says, "Anxiety, depression, thoughts of harming themselves, we're really seeing it increase in all of those areas."
She says the pandemic has contributed to the rise. The new space includes in-patient bedding, eight semi-private rooms, and one private room – all designed for patients between the ages of 5 and 17.
"We want to give kids skills and coping early, and that can help them throughout their life because there's always gonna be stress, I mean grown-ups know that life has stress. And so, knowing how to cope and deal with that is gonna help life-long,” says Dr. Meadows.
She explains that this design is based on nature which can have positive effects on behavior. The goal here is to foster creativity and to teach positive cognitive behavioral skills.
She says, "For our older kids, we use primarily cognitive behavioral therapy, which connects thoughts feelings and actions — and so, we really try to draw those connections for our older kids. But, just talking about it for younger kids is a lot harder. So, for our younger kids, it's really about recognizing, what is an emotion? What's a feeling? And how to handle those."
Planning for this space began in 2018. Looking ahead, Dr. Meadows says that she hopes to be able to continue expanding this unit and developing outpatient community resources.
She shares, "So, at least now we are talking about mental health — but I think part of the challenge with the stigma is that it's still really hard to talk about it early and get services early when we know that that's probably a thing that would help the most."
This new space will give children more mental and behavioral health resources.
