- Hello, and welcome to Living in the Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

Covid-19 has taken a toll on mental health, and services were in demand long before the pandemic.

A new facility in the Lehigh Valley is aimed at addressing that for one particular group of people.

More mental health resources are now available to teens in crisis in the Lehigh Valley.

A new youth behavioral health center opened to patients January 4th at St. Luke's Easton campus, formerly Easton Hospital.

- Right now, there's a tremendous need, and adolescents seeking care in emergency rooms has really risen like 50% or more in the past year.

- Dr. Andrew Clark will oversee the new 16-bed unit.

The section chief for child and adolescent psychiatry says in many cases, teens who may be experiencing mental health issues have to wait days for specialized treatment.

- There's a limited number of inpatient adolescent beds.

That's true for the whole country.

And so, the emergency rooms are really starting to get jammed up.

I think our-16 bed unit could often be full quite quickly.

- Dr. Clark says they will be working with kids ages 12 to 18 with varying issues.

- The different kind of things that people often find themselves in crisis with is related to safety.

It could be suicidal threats.

It could be agitated, violent threats.

It could be that an isolated teen is no longer going to school, perhaps not eating or leaving their room.

- Individual rooms, group activities, and even a calming sensory room are all designed here to help ease mental anguish.

- Our focus is on stabilization, having the kids gain coping skills, be able to do safety planning with their families, and to engage the system of care, so that they have good outpatient follow-up.

Perhaps they may need a day program, or a partial program.

We can interface with their schools to help aid in whatever may be going on with schools.

- You'll see right ahead of us, we start to see some murals on the wall.

These represent different ways of taking a journey.

- Valerie Kappes is the patient care manager for the Adolescent Behavioral Health Unit.

- We really want the kids to look at this as a part of your journey.

We all need to take care of our mental health.

And sometimes, that means we have to stop and take a focused moment to really work on that.

And so, this is just a piece of your journey and life that hopefully will help you to be able to function more successfully outside of the hospital.

- Kappes says, through this unit, St. Luke's hopes to give the Lehigh Valley community more opportunities to seek help close to home.

- A lot of times, patients are going to areas 200 miles away from where they live, and that limits the family contact time.

Families are crucial in working with the kids, because they have to go back home to live with their support system.

So, we want to make sure that they're incorporated into the treatment that we give them.

On a tour of the new space, before patients were admitted, Kappes and Dr. Clark talked about safety measures put into place here.

- So, these doors are unique to behavioral health settings.

One of the unique things about it is that they're pull-away doors.

So, if any weight is placed on them, they simply come off of the hinges.

- This furniture has some safety measures built into it?

- Absolutely.

So they're a little bit heavier than the normal chairs that we find on other units.

And we also are able to fill them with some sand, so that they're more stable and harder to pick up.

- Other features, like group meeting rooms, offer ways for teens to interact while spending time there.

- A lot of times, when kids are in crisis, they feel like they're the only ones experiencing this.

But being together with a group of their peers can be helpful in that, "I'm not alone."

You know, there are other people going through this and they can share, you know, ways that they've gotten through some of the issues that they're dealing with.

- Dr. Clark says having this open in the Easton area is vital to helping the growing number of kids seeking treatment, especially as he's seen the need grow during the pandemic.

- Our regional location is really part of making things special, so that families in the region don't have to drive to Philadelphia, to Pittsburgh, you know, out of county, for example.

Often, that's the case.

- Dr. Clarke says the new center also works with schools to continue helping students in need.

He says St. Luke's plans to start an outpatient program for this age group in the spring.

St. Luke's new Youth Behavioral Health Center at the Easton campus opened to patients January 4th.

That'll do it for this edition of Living in the Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.