Bowen Center cuts ribbon on mental health crisis center
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(photo courtesy of Bowen Center)
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(photo courtesy of Bowen Center)
Though awareness surrounding mental health continues to increase, gaps still exist, especially for those who are experiencing mental health episodes but don’t require hospitalization.
That’s the gap that Bowen Center is looking to erase as it cut the ribbon on its new mental health crisis center Thursday in Pierceton, thanks to a $4.4 million grant from the Indiana Department of Mental Health and Addiction.
Warsaw-based Bowen Center is the largest community mental health provider in the state. Vice President of Intensive Services Tess Ottenweller said the new center will be open 24 hours a day to address all type of mental health episodes.
“One of the gap areas in the state of Indiana is individuals who don’t meet criteria for hospitalization but who need more support than typical outpatient service, [who] really started falling through the cracks,” Ottenweller said.
Anyone experiencing a crisis can go walk in to the center or be dropped off by a caregiver, and they will be met by two peer counselors to assess the situation. Sometimes the person just needs a space to decompress. But in more severe cases, staff at the crisis center can work to stabilize the person and then either admit them to Bowen’s Psychiatric Hospital—which is connected to the center—or refer them to therapy or write prescriptions.
By the end of the year, Ottenweller said Bowen will also have a mobile crisis team that will go out and respond to calls about people who are going through a mental health episode.
Ottenweller believes the key to the new crisis center will be the peer counselors, who are staff who have gone through mental health or substance abuse issues in the past or have experienced a family member go through similar struggles.
“What I think really what goes above and beyond in this crisis program is that human connection that our peers provide,” Ottenweller said. “They walk alongside the individual through their crisis assessment, orient them to the options available … what coming next.”
The $4.4 million in state funding came as part of SB 1 in last year’s legislative health care overhaul. Ottenweller said Bowen Center has put some private funding towards the new building, but most of the cost for construction and staffing came from the state.
“It became the number one priority for Senator [Ryan] Mishler and other legislators,” Indiana Council of Community Mental Health Centers CEO Zoe Frantz said in a news release. “And so, this is that work. Seeing it in real form, seeing the vision of lives being touched, I’m just really proud of Bowen Center and the great work [they] are doing up here.”
The center’s location in Pierceton—about 45 minutes west of Fort Wayne—is intentional, Ottenweller said. It is meant to serve Kosciusko, Huntington, Whitely, Wabash and Marshall counties, which is the region the Bowen Center mainly operates in.
Bowen Center said the services provided by the center are available to anyone in need regardless of their ability to pay.