SUN Behavioral Health is celebrating the first anniversary of its Lexington intensive outpatient treatment center for those suffering from mental health and substance abuse issues. The facility on Sterlington Road in the Alumni Office Park is helping meet a tremendous need in the community. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reports that 746,000 adults in Kentucky have a mental illness and 40,000 Kentuckians ages 12 to 17 suffer from depression. In Lexington, SUN says its surveys reveal the average resident has 4.3 mentally unhealthy days per month.
Hoping to make a dent in those figures, SUN’s Lexington center has treated more than 200 patients from Fayette and surrounding counties over the past year.
“This place is a very nice steppingstone in helping someone make a stable transition back home,” said Jason Staats, CEO of SUN Behavioral Health Kentucky, which also operates a major psychiatric hospital in Erlanger in partnership with St. Elizabeth Healthcare. SUN is an acronym for the phrase “Solving Unmet Needs.”
“The services in Lexington include partial hospitalization,” Statts said, “which is 20 to 30 hours of treatment a week. It is group-based. Patients see a prescriber and a therapist and are there four to six hours a day. There are education and skill-building groups and psychotherapy.”
Staats says that program is designed to be an alternative to or a transition from inpatient care. “It helps people acclimate into the community and be at their own home at night and with SUN for part of the day,” he said.
There is another level of care at the Lexington center. IOP stands for intensive outpatient program. “That is 12 to 15 hours of group treatment a week, and the patient is usually in the building with us from three to four hours on their treatment day,” Staats said. “This is lessening their reliance on the higher level of treatment oversight. We are seeing them getting well and being more independent.”
Staats, a native of London, Kentucky, earned a Masters in Clinical Psychology from Eastern Kentucky University. Over the years, he gradually gained experience in his field and his most recent assignment was as Market CEO of Columbus Spring, an inpatient and outpatient mental health and addiction services center in Columbus, Ohio.
When asked how it felt to be working to help Kentuckians with their mental health and addiction problems, Staats got personal.
“That is what drew me back to Kentucky in this role,” he said. “The communities in Kentucky are personal to me. They are the places where my family and friends live. Getting those communities healthy is important to me because this is my home state, and we treat a good portion of it.”
Staats said that the need for mental health treatments spiked during the times that COVID most impacted healthcare. Many SUN patients were not able to see their providers in person during that time. Sometimes they didn’t see them at all. Other times they had to coordinate by phone or virtual meetings. “The whole philosophy of treatment is understanding the patient and when in-person interaction is taken away we see more people undermanaged or not managed at all because services are unavailable,” Staats said. “That’s when we started to see stronger symptoms in people.”
Staats is pleased that the stigma of mental health appears to be lifting in many areas, though it “still has a long way to go,” he said.
“We are seeing more awareness, visibility, and support for mental health from government and the media. Kentucky has done a better job of recognizing the need for treatment.”
Staats added that there are more town hall meetings on mental health and people are asking what they can do to improve things in their communities. There is also more coordination among partners.
Speaking of partners, SUN has just launched a new mental health program for middle-school-aged students in the Fayette County Public Schools. It is a partial hospitalization program that is operated out of Lexington Traditional Middle School. Schools, parents, and other community referral sources can recommend students to the program. Assessments are free of charge. The SUN center inside LTMS will be open during school hours and managed onsite by a therapist and a mental health technician. If inpatient care is deemed necessary, there is an option of admission to SUN’s psychiatric hospital in Erlanger.
Shericka Smith is coordinator of Extended School Services and Social Work & Mental Health Services in the school system.
“That middle school age is difficult, and many students are just trying to find their way,” Smith said. “Some deal with anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and identity crisis situations. It may not be serious enough to require complete hospitalization, but students may need to learn skills to better cope.”
Smith says SUN has a good reputation with psychiatric treatment and she believes SUN can help get students back on track and prepared to reenter their traditional middle school. With 9,100 middle school students enrolled in the district, Smith expects the SUN center to be busy.
As for the future, SUN’s CEO wants to maintain good communication with all its partners, see what services are missing and fill them.
“It takes a community to treat mental health issues,” Staats said. “The patient is just one part of the equation. We also must talk with the patient’s family, the outpatient provider, and the primary care doctor. It takes coordination to make patients well.”