University of California San Francisco has opened the Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building, a "one-of-a-kind" treatment center designed to reinvent mental health services and tackle the stigma around psychiatric treatment, local news source KRON 4 reported June 27.
By building the $60 million, 150,000-square-foot center in a central location and using a light-filled atrium and interior transparency designed to feel welcoming to the community, the university said it hopes to revitalize the outdated image of obscure and secluded psychiatric institutions.
"We wanted to design a building that defied outdated psychiatric institutional models that separated mental from physical health and perpetuated a culture of shame," Matthew State, PhD, UC San Francisco professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, told KRON 4.
The center's services include psychiatry, psychology, neurology, neurosurgery, radiology, pediatrics, anesthesiology and OB-GYN that use an all-encompassing treatment strategy blending physical and mental health.