Bucks County families will soon have another option for local in-person pediatric mental health services when a new clinic opens in Doylestown next month.

Blackbird Health offers holistic mental and behavioral health care for patients ages 2 through 26, accepting all commercial insurance companies in the area. The clinic at 1980 S. Easton Road will offer a full range of services including diagnostic evaluations, therapy, psychiatry, autism assessments, and support for conditions like anxiety, ADHD, depression and more.

“At the most basic level, what they need is access to high quality care that can be delivered quickly and can be delivered with an option of being seen in person,” said Blackbird Health CEO Tom Peterson, who shared that he has three children who receive care through the company.

The clinic will begin virtual new patient assessments and start accepting referrals on Sept. 15 before opening for in-person visits on Oct. 1.

The Doylestown location will be the company’s sixth in the region and second in the county after the Langhorne clinic. Blackbird generally tries to set up clinics within a short distance of each other so that families don’t need to travel very far to access in-person care, Peterson said

“We’ve just heard from the community that have an in-person option is really, really important for kids,” he said.

About 70% of Blackbird patients either come by word of mouth or are referred by local pediatricians, schools and others that have previously referred patients to the clinic. About 45% of their patients are under 10 years old, Peterson said.

Blackbird’s approach to care is unique, Peterson said, as they first conduct an overarching assessment of a new patient to get a clear picture of all of their symptoms instead of potentially boxing them in with the more narrow, discpline-specific evaluations that are common elsewhere.

“Things aren’t always as straightforward as a single diagnosis,” Peterson said. “Kids are complex, people are complex.”

“Our approach starts with a holistic evaluation that looks at the whole child and the family in that first visit to identify whether or not there might be something else underneath the covers that is driving that behavior,” Peterson said.

If the clinicians identify something in that initial assessment, they will proceed as needed whether it be ordering an autism evaluation, a speech and language or sensory motor evaluation, therapy, medication — whatever they deem as the best next step, Peterson said.

The goal is to find the root cause of the symptoms and behaviors and specifically address them as opposed to taking a more broad spectrum approach to care based on a general diagnosis. For example, while two kids both may be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, it might present very differently for each of them and therefore require two different approaches to treatment.

“We start with this ‘understanding first’ assessment that really gets to that root cause and then we build a treatment plan around that,” Peterson said.

You can learn more about Blackbird Health on their website.

Lacey Latch is the development reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer. She can be reached at LLatch@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Blackbird Health to open a mental health clinic for kids and teens in Doylestown