After more than 15 years of advocacy and background work from community members and county leaders, Santa Clara’s first inpatient psychiatric facility for youth is set to open this spring at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose. The new building will consolidate existing mental health and emergency psychiatric services around the campus and has 77 beds, 35 of which are dedicated to children and adolescents.
The idea was established in 2010 at a regular meeting of Santa Clara County’s Adolescent Counseling Services Advisory Board.
Sigrid Pinsky, a previous board member and Palo Alto resident, was listening to the routine staff report on youth mental health when she paused and raised her hand: “Wait, are you telling me that we have to send our kids in crisis outside of the county?”
The staff member said yes, because the county did not have enough beds for psychiatric patients, and none even existed for youth.
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In 2017, the year the project was approved, 689 youth were admitted to out-of-county psychiatric hospitals and stayed for an average of six days, according to Santa Clara County’s official website.
“To have families have to go out of the county, all the way up to Marin or all the way over to Fremont when they’re already in such a difficult situation just seemed unbearable to me,” Pinsky said.
Pinsky said she called former County Supervisor Joe Simitian the morning after the meeting to express her concern regarding the lack of psychiatric aid for youth in Santa Clara.
“I give him so much credit,” Pinsky said. “He just never let go of this. He thought it was super important to get this facility built.”
Simitian first proposed the project in 2015, and a revised, more detailed plan was approved in 2021. Although construction began in 2023, the project faced construction delays due to labor shortages and exceeded its 222 million budget by nearly two times its original.
Pinsky said the new facility will have an immediate impact on youth in need of psychiatric care but is just the first step in solving the county’s youth mental health care problem.
“We’re not done,” Pinsky said. “This doesn’t cover all the needs in the county, but it’s an enormous good start.”
The facility has separate floors for youth and adults. It provides medical care, psychiatric assessment and emergency crisis services. Andie Barker, a therapist at the Paly Wellness Center, said having dedicated facilities for youth is necessary to provide effective care.
“Different programs are initiated for different developmental stages of life,” Barker said. “Depending on what the adults might be going through, that would be very different than what a teenager would be going through. The needs would be so varied. There would have to be completely different programming.”
Junior Selena Luo, co-president of the Clinical Psychology Club, said having more support options available for teens is increasingly important.
“Many teenagers have anxiety, depression and academic pressure,” Luo said. “The increasing crisis of those pressures is definitely a big problem.”
Barker also said having a hospital in close proximity benefits patients’ families.
“If you do require that level of care, obviously you want to receive that care close to home, so it’s accessible for your family and your support system to be involved in the care,” Barker said. “It’s not usually just the patient that’s being treated. It’s the whole family system.”
Barker also said the facility’s location is important because treatment usually continues even after patients return home.
“When you do receive care within your community, that support is also then typically available after discharge, too, so to receive support and treatment within the place that you live is ideal,” Barker said.
Barker said she’s hopeful for the new facility.
“I’m always excited as a social worker to hear about additional care options in our community,” Barker said. “It’s always a win when there’s additional treatment available and avenues for people to receive that treatment.”