East Alabama Health, a two-hospital system based in Opelika, recently opened a freestanding, $44 million mental health facility with the state’s only long-term adolescent unit.
The 54,000-square-foot facility expanded the system’s space for outpatient mental health services and increased its number of inpatient psychiatry beds from 28 to 40, according to a Dec. 17 news release. The outpatient side of the facility began seeing patients in late December, and the inpatient units will open in mid-January.
The adult inpatient units are separated into two wings, with 10 beds for women and 10 beds for men. There is also an 11-bed short-term child and adolescent unit and a nine-bed long-term adolescent unit — the only one of its kind in Alabama.
At the long-term unit, pediatric patients can continue their education and earn a high school diploma through the facility’s onsite school. The unit also has a hands-on learning kitchen to help patients achieve more independence, the system said.
