Mental Health Hospital For Youth May Be Coming To Tinley Park

TINLEY PARK, IL — Plans are underway to bring Tinley Park a hospital that will serve the mental health needs of children and adolescents.

MIRA Neuro-Behavioral Health Center for Children and Adolescents is scheduled to be reviewed by the state’s Health Facilities and Services Review Board in September. If it is approved, owners will renovate a building on Prosperi Drive in Tinley Park in the fall to create the 30-bed, acute- care psychiatric hospital for youth. Outpatient services at the $5 million- facility could begin in the winter, and some acute care hospital beds will open in June. The center will operate fully by January 2021. MIRA is owned by Chris Higgins of Palos Behavioral Health Professionals and three other individuals.

“It is crucial to have a place where children and their families have confident that appropriate care is available when they are facing an acute mental or behavioral health crisis,” Higgins said in a statement.

The announcement was made at a news conference Tuesday with Higgins and State Sen. Michael E. Hastings of Tinley Park. Hastings has led legislative efforts to improve mental health care in Illinois through a package called the March to Mental Health.

“Too many children are dealing with painful mental and behavioral health challenges that ruin their quality of life. Too many family’s lives are torn apart and devastated because their children are facing overwhelming struggles. Too often, there is nowhere to turn,” Hastings said in a statement. “Today, we are providing new hope that tomorrow will be better for children and families throughout the south suburbs and our region."

The goal of the center is to address a mental health care crisis for youth in the Chicagoland area. Studies show the area lacks the resources available to help those under 18 get mental health help. NPR Illinois, for example, has reported that about 20 percent of children in Illinois suffer from mental illness, yet only about half receive the treatment they need. In a letter of support for the new hospital, William Walsh, medical director at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, said that the average child who visits the hospital's emergency room spends three to five hours there. However, if they need psychiatric help, they spend three times longer there.

"When patients spend a long time waiting in a bed in our ED it delays them getting the care they need in an appropriate environment and prevents us from using that bed for another patient," he wrote.

Advocates said MIRA will ease this burden, provide specialized care, and offer services at a lower cost than other hospitals or facilities provide.