A bed in a pediatric psychiatric facility in Portland.

Central Oregon families whose children are experiencing a psychiatric crisis will soon have an in-patient treatment option in the region, rather than receiving treatment across the mountains.

State lawmakers approved $3.1 million in this year’s legislative session to fund a child psychiatric facility in Deschutes County. The Oregon Health Authority is providing matching funds and there’s a grant of $750,000  from the Central Oregon Health Council to support the project.

For decades, when children were in crisis — at risk of harming themselves or others —  the process was to take them to an emergency room where they’d stay for a day, a week or a month until a space opened in one of the 165 psychiatric beds for adults and youth that are located in Western Oregon. Families often would have to make the trek on their own to join their children or not go at all. 

Keeping children in crisis in an emergency department room without treatment can be traumatic for children and their families, said Molly Wells Darling, St. Charles Health System’s senior behavioral health director. The care the children receive is inappropriate, the health system said. In 2023, 456 youth received behavioral health support in St. Charles four emergency departments, a 15% increase from 2022, according to the health system.  

“It’s a very exciting project,” said Holly Harris, interim director of Deschutes County Health services. “Our region has no child psychiatric beds and it’s been a need for quite some time. In the past two years, we were galvanized to make this happen.”

In 2024, 110 youth were boarded in the emergency departments at one of St. Charles  Health System’s four Central Oregon hospitals. That is double what it was in 2019, Wells Darling said. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in Oregon for  youth between the ages of 10 and 24, according to the health system. 

The plan is to build a 15-bed facility in Redmond and find a partner to operate the facility by the fall of 2026. 

“We’re poised to move on this as soon as we get the money in hand,” Harris said. “We anticipate that we can hit the ground running.”

Mental Health America ranks Oregon No. 49 in the nation for youth mental health for having a high prevalence of mental illness and lower rates of access to care, according to the 2024 Mental Health America report. Arizona and Nevada rank No. 50 and 51. Washington, D.C. ranked No. 1 in the survey for the lowest prevalence of youth mental illness, according to the study. 

In Oregon there are 41 beds available for youth statewide, but the number of beds fluctuates depending on availability of workers, youth group dynamics  or if families can attend intake meetings, said Kim Lippert, Oregon Health Authority Behavioral Health spokesperson. 

St. Charles will continue to work with the county while it selects a provider to run the program, Wells Darling said. The health system, however, will not agree to provide the mental health services. 

“Together we’ll continue to work with our partners and collaborate with a provider on what the facility will look like and how it will function to better serve our youth,” Wells Darling said. “It’s heart-breaking to talk to a family that we’ll have to send their child two or three hours away for treatment. I can’t imagine how frightening that must feel for a family, especially if they can’t be there.”

State Rep. Emerson Levy, D-Bend, said the coalition of health care  providers that include St. Charles, PacificSource, Central Oregon Health Council, BestCare Treatment Services, Deschutes County and mental health provider Jackson House have spent nearly a decade actively advocating for these funds.

“I went into the 2025 legislative session with getting this funding for our community as my No. 1 priority,” Levy said. “This long-overdue investment is critical to addressing a severe gap in behavioral health services for children and adolescents in our region.

 “I am so grateful for our incredible mental healthcare providers who brought this to our attention. Our youth deserve timely, compassionate, and community-based mental health care. “

Reporter: 541-633-2117, suzanne.roig@bendbulletin.com