While most Sarasotans were brining a turkey, last-minute shopping for forgotten Thanksgiving dinner ingredients or headed to the airport, I was getting an exclusive tour of Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s new mental health care facility, the Cornell Behavioral Health Pavilion, which will have its grand opening to the public Dec. 1.
For months on my daily walks, I’d been watching this gleaming, three-story, glass-heavy building on S. Osprey Ave. take shape, imagining how the finished product might change the trajectory for a person with acute mental health needs.
Just across the street is the building this facility will replace – SMH’s Bayside Center for Behavioral Health, a dark, cramped, former nursing home where my son had a not-so-great experience not long after our arrival in Sarasota in 2010.
Needless to say, I was hoping for a vast improvement.
Terry Cassidy met me in the sun-filled, expansive front lobby, looking as happy as I’d seen her since she became executive director of Bayside in 2018. She admits she would never have taken the job if there hadn’t been the promise of a new, state-of-the-art psychiatric center in the offing. Five years and $74 million later (including a $10 million gift from Target CEO Brian Cornell and his family), it is here.
“I get goosebumps every time I walk in,” Cassidy says.
She guides me through the corridors as if I were a patient arriving at the “assessment center,” which will be staffed 24-hours a day to intake patients in crisis or who enter on a Baker Act.
The walls are a soft, pacific blue; the paintings oversized photos of calming beach scenes and flowers. There are individual pods, each with its own TV screen, where patients can watch or listen to music as they wait to talk to a clinician; refreshments for the hungry or thirsty, even a “quiet room” for anyone who needs less noise and more privacy.
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If admitted, patients, depending on their age, will be assigned rooms in one of the four units on the second and third floors – adolescent/children; adults; seniors; and adults with acute medical needs.
There are 82 beds in total and 90% of them are singles with private bathrooms. (Bayside has 61, all shared.) They look like tidy hospital rooms except each has its own television screen, a night light for bed reading, a huge window and overhead mood lighting that can change color.
“Kind of looks like a college dorm, doesn’t it?” Cassidy asks and I think, “Yeah, like I wish my dorm room had looked.“
Each unit has a multi-purpose room that will serve as dining hall, visitation center and, sometimes, movie theater. I smell pizza and turn around to see what looks like a restaurant kitchen, where patients can order off a hot-and-cold menu that offers everything from comfort foods to salads and vegetarian dishes.
On our way to the soaring-ceilinged gymnasium – where there’s a basketball court, stationary bikes, yoga and aerobic equipment – we pass one of several “sensory” rooms, where a patient can lay down in a cushioned rocking chair, covered by a weighted blanket and enjoy a machine that projects aromatherapy, calming video projections and fiber optics lights.
There are also rooms with equipment for the latest in targeted therapies like ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) and TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation).
Here and there are screened porches, carpeted with artificial grass, open to fresh air and, in some instances, even direct sunshine.
“It’s all intentional,” Cassidy says. “The lighting, the colors, the surfaces. It’s all designed to help the person feel calm and cared for.”
The center is not intended for long term or residential care (though the forward-thinking design makes a future adaptation possible), but there is space dedicated to the post-acute “step down” programs that are so critical in someone’s recovery.
In general, it takes an average of a week to stabilize someone who is suicidal; up to three weeks for someone who has acute psychotic symptoms, Cassidy says. Then they can return for the “partial hospitalization” program (5 to 6 hours, five days a week), followed by a three-days-a-week outpatient program.
Were it not for the barely noticeable metal detector, the heavily screened porches and the lockers to hold visitors’ belongings, you’d never know you were in a lockdown facility. Remembering the post-traumatic stress both my son and I suffered after his experiences 13 years ago, I felt close to tears – either that, or ready to check myself in.
When Cassidy says, “This speaks so highly of this hospital and this health care system to put this much emphasis on mental health,” I nod my head, thinking about the recent attacks on SMH from those demanding greater “medical freedom.”
As someone who would have given anything for a place like this when my family member was in crisis, I wish they could appreciate what this commitment to our community’s mental health needs means.
As I’m leaving, my cellphone rings. It’s my son. I start gushing about this amazing new facility – its beauty, its technology, its innovation, its intention – but he stops me.
“That’s really great, Mom,” he says. “But none of it matters unless they treat people nicely.”
His response, born of his own lived experience in a crisis unit, was understandable, and hardly isolated. Just last spring I wrote of feeling like “I was in prison” while visiting a young friend after a Baker Act at a different facility. Outdated, inflexible, crowded spaces that make doing the job of promoting recovery harder – if not impossible – affect employees, too.
SMH’s behavioral health staff, which has increased by 50 to meet the needs of the new center, will be the final critical element in making this facility one of the best in the nation. All have been trained in trauma-informed practices and, at last, they will have the physical environment to support that compassionate care.
How wonderful to think that future visitors to the Cornell Pavilion could come away from an acute mental health crisis, not with enduring scars, but with gratitude and hope.
The public is invited to the grand opening of the Cornell Behavioral Health Pavilion, located at 1625 S. Osprey, Friday, Dec. 1 from 10 a.m. to noon.
Contact Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or 505-238-0392
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: SMH’s new mental health facility is an inspiring step forward
