Colorado health system to open teen psychology center

To help teens suffering with mental illness, a Colorado medical center will open a new unit dedicated to specialized youth psychology care in July.

The Medical Center of Aurora in Aurora, Colo. is opening its adolescent behavioral unit July 6, a $4.9 million project that will serve youth ages 12 to 17.

The center will provide cognitive behavior therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy and a trauma-informed care model to help patients suffering from anger management, anxiety and depression.

“One of the things that makes this unit very unique is that we are going with more of a therapeutic clinical model as opposed to the traditional medical model,” said Scott Adams, director of youth services for the program, who joined the medical center just three weeks ago to oversee the launch of the new unit.

Specifically, the unit will be offering music therapy, recreation therapy, occupational therapy and pet therapy, Adams said. Many of the services can be covered with Medicaid and Medicare insurance plans.

The center, which has been in development for almost two years, will offer 20 in-patient beds with a typical patient stay will be about 7-14 days. An outpatient service is still being developed, Adams said.

The Denver area currently only has 148 in-patient psychiatric beds in medical facilities, making the addition of Aurora’s 20 beds a significant increase. Adams said the area has been challenged with providing in-patient beds to treat adolescents needing psychiatric care, noting they often spend a lot of time in emergency departments.

“They can remain in emergency rooms for weeks at a time before available bed space is found for them,” he said. “Our intent is to get them into a more appropriate treatment setting much more quickly."