Lindner Center grows services to meet needs for mental health services

Lindner Center of HOPE

What: Mental health treatment center, with inpatient and outpatient services; a joint venture of Lindner Family Foundation and UC Health

Where: 4075 Old Western Row Road, Mason (Warren County)

Phone: 513-536-4673

CEO: Dr. Paul Keck Jr.

Website: www.lindnercenterofhope.org

Beds: Total 64, including 32 adult inpatient beds; 16 adolescent beds and 16 residential beds (Sibcy House)

Land: 35 acres

Employees: approximately 300, including 40 clinicians

Southwest Ohio’s growing mental health services

— Lindner Center of HOPE in Mason, in Warren County, a mental health treatment center, celebrates five years since it opened in August

— Mental Health Services for Clark and Madison Counties opens Monday a new $10 million facility in Springfield

— Beckett Springs opens a 48-bed behavioral hospital in West Chester Twp., in Butler County, in July

— Dr. John Johnson bought early in 2011 the former state mental hospital Twin Valley in Dayton on Wayne Avenue and reopened it later that year as Access Hospital Dayton

The stigma attached to mental illness exists even though it’s a common thing. One in four people over their lifetime will have a mental illness that requires treatment, Dr. Paul Keck Jr., president and chief executive officer of mental health center Lindner Center of HOPE, said.

Yet, until the new Beckett Springs behavioral hospital opens in West Chester Twp., which it is scheduled to do next month, Warren County’s Lindner Center is the only hospital and health center in the Cincinnati region dedicated solely to mental health services.

It is with that thinking that the center was opened in 2008 to address the “vastly” unmet needs for mental health services in the area, Keck said. Lindner Center of HOPE, 4075 Old Western Row Road, celebrates in August the five-year anniversary of its opening.

“The data are overwhelming and have been there for decades showing that the number one public health problem in the U.S. by far is mental illness,” Keck said.

“People think mental illness is because you’re weak or you ought to be able to motivate yourself. And it’s just simply ignorance,” he said.

“We all inherit risks for different medical problems and risks for most psychiatric disorders is in part genetic. Clearly environmental influences often trigger depression or other things.”

The nonprofit hospital is a joint venture of Lindner Family Foundation and Cincinnati hospital system UC Health. Over the years, more than 4,000 patients have been admitted and there have been more than 138,000 outpatient visits.

Demand for Lindner Center’s services continue to grow. “We’re about as busy as we can be,” Keck said.

Lindner Center’s services cover about every common mental illness except severe autism and advanced Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, Keck said.

The center, made to have a lodge-like, nature retreat feel instead of a sterile hospital feel, has services ranging across the age span including services for children, adults and older adults. The most common mental illnesses are mood disorders, and Lindner Center treats depression and bipolar, eating, anxiety, and compulsive disorders, among other mental illnesses, Keck said.

People travel on a daily basis from as far as 50 miles away to the Mason health center, Keck said. The Warren County facility treats most patients on a same-day outpatient basis.

It also offers a nationally recognized residential, 16-bed intensive diagnostics program. Called Sibcy House, it offers a 10-day diagnostic assessment or 28-day combination diagnostic and treatment program.

“We created this Sibcy House program…for adults who are having difficulties either with an addiction, with a mental health problem or both, and they’re just not getting well with standard treatments,” Keck said.

“A lot of people who experience psychiatric problems have more than one, so it’s not uncommon, for example, for someone to have a problem with depression and alcohol.”

Additionally the hospital has 48 inpatient beds. Patients can be hospitalized in the most severe cases, such as when they become a danger to themselves or others.

Lindner Center also boasts a clinical research center, brain imaging center for research and diagnostic purposes, and non-drug neuromodulation treatment services — magnetic pulses and electric shocks — for people with major depression and other severe illnesses.

The benefit of the research institute is “when we have new research findings, we can quickly apply them to clinical care, which is a real advantage to patients,” Keck said.

In partnership with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Lindner Center offers hospital services for adolescents and specialized treatment for teen eating disorders.

Lindner Center is a founding member of the National Network of Depression Centers.

New services are being added. In May 2012, a partial hospitalization program for adults was started to offer two to four weeks of transitional care. This is for patients who are discharged from a hospital, but need ongoing intensive care. Either that, or the patients are receiving outpatients services and need to step up to more intensive care, Jennifer Pierson, Lindner Center spokeswoman said. Enrollees attend five days a week and go home at the end of the day.

This year, Lindner Center introduced an addiction intensive outpatient program that meets three times a week in the evenings for at least six weeks. This is for patients suffering from addiction and/or related disorders significant enough to affect their daily lives.

Beginning in July, clinicians from Lindner Center will offer consultation services to West Chester Hospital, part of UC Health.

Plans going forward are to expand outpatient services.

Future plans call for opening an intensive diagnostic unit for children and teenagers, similar to Sibcy House for adults, which requires construction of a new building, Keck said.

“We regard that as a huge unmet community need because where do you go if you’ve got a teenager with an addiction? With depression?” he said. “Teenage years are usually when first signs of most major mental illnesses start to show.”

Hospital officials expect to kick off later this year a $12 million fundraising campaign to open the teen intensive diagnostic unit, grow Lindner Center’s endowment and make improvements to the residential Sibcy House adult program, Pierson said. The goal is to raise the money by 2015, she said.