“Any kind of acute behavioral health service you may need are all in this building,” said Dr. Kelly Blankenship, the division chief of psychiatry at Dayton Children’s.
The Mathile Center for Mental Health and Wellness will double the number of inpatient mental health beds Dayton Children’s has from 24 to 48, moving mental health beds from the main hospital over to this new one in 2025.
The center will also improve the continuity of care by co-locating a full continuum of mental health services, including inpatient, outpatient and crisis services, within one building. Dayton Children’s offers inpatient, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient and other services for mental health.
“Part of why we put all these services together is that we can help move kids and families seamlessly through different levels of care,” Blankenship said.
On the first floor of the building is the hospital’s new mental health crisis center, which increased from seven rooms at the current hospital to 12 rooms, in addition to other amenities. The crisis center is like a hospital’s ER, but for mental health crises.
“In this crisis center, we have a comfort room, so if the kids are really, really anxious or start to become a little escalated, they can go into that room to help them calm,” Blankenship said.
The comfort room will have low lighting and low stimulation for children who may be overstimulated or may be experiencing a sensory overload.
“There’s a lot of things there for kids with sensory needs,” Blankenship said.
Dayton Children’s needed to increase the number of rooms in its crisis center as there could be long wait times for patients needing to be seen, according to Blankenship, especially during peak times like during the school year.
With the current seven-room crisis center, families could be waiting for hours to be seen, she said. Once this new 12-room crisis center is complete, their goal is to get families to a room in around 30 minutes so they’re not waiting as long for an assessment.
“When you’re in a mental health crisis, sitting in a really crowded waiting room does not help,” Blankenship said.
Throughout the new building, the doors to the patient rooms and other similar areas have special hardware to prevent patients from using the doors to hurt themselves.
All of the door handles and other hardware used in constructing the building are anti-ligature products to prevent suicide. Many of the doors will also be able to move in both directions to prevent someone from blocking a door, Dayton Children’s staff said.
Many doors throughout the facility, particularly with the patient rooms on the upper floors, have sensors that will alert staff if someone tries to throw something over the door, like a sheet or blanket, in an attempt to create a ligature.
Fixtures in the bathrooms and showers in the patient rooms also have anti-ligature safety measures.
The building also has high impact drywall, which is reinforced with fiberglass, said Lon Arnett, director of construction at Dayton Children’s.
“You can kick it and you won’t be able to kick through it,” Arnett said. The windows throughout the facility are also high impact.
The floors are made with pick-proof caulking and tamper-resistant sealants, especially in the patient rooms, to prevent patients from peeling up the caulk and hurting themselves in some way.
The building has an ambulance garage instead of just an ambulance drop-off area. This allows staff to shut the garage doors and prevent a child from running away, Blankenship said.
There also outdoor courtyard spaces on each floor, allowing patients to be able to get time outside without the patient having to be taken off of their floor or unit.
Danis Construction, Cannon Design/FKP, and Champlin Architecture are the construction and design teams working on constructing the Mathile Center for Mental Health and Wellness. It is expected to be complete by spring or early summer 2025.
Dayton Children’s Hospital is one of 31 independent freestanding children’s hospitals in the country, and it is the Dayton region’s only hospital dedicated to children. Dayton Children’s serves 20 Ohio counties and eastern Indiana, and they care for more than 400,000 children each year.
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