Wake County will break ground on a new inpatient mental health facility on Wednesday, July 1, 2009, at 10 a.m., on Sunnybrook Road, Raleigh (across from Holly Hill Hospital).

The facility, part of Wake’s Mental Health Continuum of Care, will provide inpatient services to citizens with behavioral health disorders, reserving bed space for the most acute and critical cases.

“This new facility will be another cornerstone, along with Holly Hill and Central Regional hospitals, connecting the citizens of Wake County with a mental health life-line unparalleled in the State,” said Wake County Board of Commissioners Chairman Harold H. Webb. “I really want everyone to know how fortunate we are to have the leadership and the resources to see this kind of progress, and that the county commissioners intend to keep mental health services at the top of our priority goals.”

The facility, which will consists of two buildings that will be constructed on an existing County-owned 19-acre site, will provide more space for the County’s crisis and assessment services, continue inpatient substance abuse services in a state-of-the-art 16-bed hospital and provide two new intermediate levels of residential care: a 16-bed acute detox unit and a 16-bed short-term facility based crisis unit.

Together with agreements with Holly Hill Hospital and Central Regional Hospital to provide inpatient care for up to three years, a minimum of 116 beds will be available for residents of Wake County in the fall of 2010.

The project is estimated to cost approximately $23 million. Funding set aside in the Community Improvement Plan for the Continuum of Care Facility includes an appropriation of $10 million, authorized by the Board in fiscal year 2006. In addition to these funds, the ABC Board and Human Services Department will contribute to the project.  

In 2002, in response to federal law, the state of North Carolina began to implement a plan to expand community services, while simultaneously reducing the number of beds in state-operated psychiatric hospitals. As part of the plan, the state closed Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, and consolidated patients in Dix and John Umstead Hospital into a new central Hospital in Butner, resulting in fewer state hospital beds available for use by Wake County mental health patients.