Michigan’s newest long-term facility for people suffering from acute mental health crises features wide corridors painted in soothing shades of green and blue, open-air porches and secure outdoor courtyards.
Though hard hats are still needed to walk the halls of the Southeast Michigan Psychiatric Hospital in Northville Township, the new, $384 million state-run facility will be able to treat 264 people — both adults and children — when it opens this fall.
Elizabeth Hertel, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, toured the site Monday, March 16, and said the demand is high for mental and behavioral health services that range from inpatient treatment for acute, serious conditions to outpatient services for people with milder or more moderate conditions.
“We’ve really been thoughtful about trying to invest resources throughout that continuum,” she told the Detroit Free Press. “This is our biggest project and allows us to expand the state’s capacity for inpatient beds … and will make a big difference.”
When it opens in mid-October, the 410,000-square-foot hospital will have 198 single-occupancy rooms, 33 double occupancy rooms — for a total of 231 patient rooms. Those rooms will be able to accommodate up to 192 adults and 72 children/adolescents, and will expand the state’s capacity by 54 beds in all, after the planned closure of another hospital.
It will have a gym with a basketball court and a stage, an adult education space, a school for children and teens, a commercial kitchen, an artist space that includes a kiln, a music room, a horticulture room, a hair salon, libraries for children and adolescents and a separate library for adults, a dental suite, a chapel and its own pharmacy.
It is being built on the same 45-acre property that once was home to the Hawthorn Center, a state-run inpatient psychiatric hospital for children, which closed in 2023, and was demolished to make way for the new psychiatric hospital.
Patients who are being treated at the Walter Reuther Psychiatric Hospital in Westland will be transferred to the new hospital in Northville Township over a span of two days in mid-October, said Dr. George Mellos, senior deputy director of state hospitals administration at MDHHS. After that, the Walter Reuther hospital will close.
“Each unit will have a treatment team that consists of a psychiatrist and several social workers, typically a psychologist, and then the nurses and direct care staff,” he said. “We will bring most of our staff over from Walter Reuther. We’ll staff the facility at that rate until we can hire.”
The average patient undergoing inpatient psychiatric treatment at state-run Michigan hospitals stays between six months and a year, Mellos said, which “gives us time to thoroughly assess the patient, their community circumstances, family circumstances so that we can address the variables … like medical issues, intellectual issues, substance use disorders. All of those things play into the successful treatment of serious mental illness like schizophrenia. And we have built this facility to address those variables.”
The workforce would need to grow to fully staff the Northville Township hospital and accommodate the added beds and larger patient load, Mellos said. Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s FY 2027 budget proposal includes $80.1 million to fund operations at the new hospital and to hire and train additional staff.
The facility will be heated and cooled with 352 geothermal wells, which were built under the parking lot.
“Each one of those wells is drilled 550 feet into the earth, and those wells use the natural, consistent temperature of the earth to basically heat and cool this facility,” said Andrew Miller, executive project director for Christman Company, which is handling the construction.
“It’s an extremely sustainable, efficient, cost-effective way to run a facility this size,” he said, noting that the project used 75 miles of geothermal piping and 7 million pounds of steel. About 1,700 workers have helped with the construction of the project so far, putting in more than 850,000 hours of work.
Access to outdoor spaces — 12 secure courtyards — was intentional at the new hospital, Mellos said, as research studies have shown that spending time outdoors can boost a person’s mood and overall mental health.
“Green space treatment is reimbursable in the European Union,” he said. “Your psychiatrist can write you a prescription and you have to be able to demonstrate that you spent 20 minutes outside, and then you get money back for it.
“At the Walter Reuther facility, it’s tough to get patients outside. Here, outdoor space is immediately contiguous to the unit.”
The project is funded by $384 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, also known as ARPA, said Jen Flood, budget director for the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget. ARPA, which was approved by Congress in 2021, allocated $1.9 trillion in pandemic-relief funds to state and local governments and businesses.
“The team across state government has done an incredible job … with a lot of tight deadlines,” Flood said. “Every penny needs to be spent by the end of this year or it’s at risk of going back to Washington, D.C. So, we are going to make sure every penny is spent. We are on track.”
Project leaders worked to leverage that money, Flood said, buying many of the supplies and materials up front.
“We’ve seen a ton of inflation over the years this project has been underway, so they have done some incredible work to contain costs and deliver on time,” she said.
Hertel said Whitmer and the state Legislature have worked together to build a deeper, more accessible mental health infrastructure by opening crisis stabilization units and certified community behavioral health centers around the state.
“I think we have made a lot of progress,” she said.
Still, she acknowledged, demand outpaces supply of inpatient psychiatric beds. Hospital emergency rooms often have to board people who are in psychiatric crises because there aren’t enough beds to accommodate them at the state’s psychiatric hospitals. The state of Michigan operates four inpatient hospitals that serve nearly 600 patients in Caro, Kalamazoo, Westland and Saline.
“Not every individual that goes to an emergency department necessarily needs psychiatric or inpatient care,” Hertel said. “So, that’s why we are trying to work on an array or services. …
“In Dewitt, in Detroit and in Grand Rapids, their crisis stabilization units have demonstrated reductions in inpatient admissions, which is fantastic. It is hard to say how much it will alleviate those services because I think there continues to be pent-up demand for services.”
The rise in demand, she said, is partially fueled by a greater acceptance societally of mental and behavioral health conditions and the need for access to treatment.
“People don’t feel ostracized for asking for services,” she said, “and so we are trying to meet that need.”
Still, Mellos said Michigan ranks in the bottom 5% nationally for psychiatric hospital beds per capita.
“We do need more,” he said, given that the state has a waitlist of about 300 people on the adult side and ranges from 5 to 40 children and adolescents waiting for an inpatient psychiatric hospital bed.
Contact Kristen Shamus: kshamus@freepress.com. Subscribe to the Detroit Free Press.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan psychiatric hospital in Northville Twp. to open in October
Reporting by Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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