Your brain needs just as much care as your body. That’s why Memorial Health’s Behavioral Health Center strives to help people struggling with their mental health in the community and beyond.
Almost all ages are welcome to receive mental health care at the center. Dr. Ethan Lindsey, a psychiatrist at Memorial Health, said the facility serves a wide range of patients.
“We serve patients who have mental health issues from age four to age 75,” he said.
The center offers both outpatient and inpatient care to people across Oklahoma communities and the state as a whole. It is split into three units: child, adolescent and adult, so health care professionals can better treat patients’ different needs.
“The goal is to, with children and adolescents in particular, it’s to optimize their functioning, get them back out, back into their lives in a way that they can be successful,” Lindsey said.
Lindsey said the center is a tertiary referral center, drawing patients from across Oklahoma.
“We have the patients here, patients from Miami, from Guymon, from all over the state,” he said, “Lots of patients from Tulsa, lots of patients from Oklahoma City.”
The Memorial Health Behavioral Health Center treats patients with varying mental health challenges and crises. Outpatient care is meant for those who can manage their mental health at home, while inpatient care can be helpful for people who need around-the-clock care.
For those considering inpatient care, there are steps needed before admission. Lindsey described the assessment process.
“We have an assessment process,” he said, “You don’t necessarily have to have a referral; people exhibiting self harmful or suicidal behaviors or significant aggression.”
He added, “People can call here and get an assessment, a mental health assessment and we can make a determination about whether this is the appropriate level of care or if some kind of outpatient treatment is more appropriate.”
Determining whether inpatient care is necessary depends on the severity of a patient’s mental health struggles.
“In the child unit, we deal with kids who have significant aggression or issues with profound oppositional behaviors,” Lindsey said, “But, it has to be something that’s dangerous, I mean they have to be doing things that are aggressive to the point of being dangerous or self harmful or suicidal.”
That applies to the other units.
How long a patient stays depends on their needs, according to Lindsey.
“Our average length of stay on the child unit’s about 30 days,” he said, “The average length of stay in the adolescent unit is 14 to 30 days, the adult unit has about a seven day length of stay.”
However, patients may stay longer depending on the severity of their mental health challenges.
“We can keep kids as long as they need to be here,” Lindsey said, “So, sometimes we will have kids, we’ve had kids here for as long as four to six months if they have a lot of traumas.”
He added, “We have children here in DHS custody, and if placement is a real difficult issue for those kids and they have significant trauma or medical health issues, those kids have stayed quite a bit longer.”
Once a patient is ready, they’ll transition to outpatient care with a nurse practitioner and they’ll be connected to therapy services, which Memorial Health offers.
If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You don’t have to go through this alone.
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