Each morning at Oklahoma Children’s Hospital OU Health, a new list arrives: kids in crisis awaiting psychiatric care. 

Often five or more patients appear on the list overnight, some as young as preschoolers. Most are middle and high school students facing severe anxiety, self-harm or suicide attempts. But the programs and providers that offer the treatment they need can’t keep up. 

Poor access to care is just one of the reasons Oklahoma ranked 39th in the nation for youth mental health care, according to the 2024 State of Mental Health in America report. Nationwide, one in five children struggle with severe mental or behavioral health challenges.

For Dr. Robyn Cowperthwaite—chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and a longtime champion for expanded mental health resources—the need has never been clearer. 

“Oklahoma is a top 10 state for completed youth suicides,” says Cowperthwaite, a 1997 OU alum who also serves as the Rainbolt Family Endowed Chair in Child Psychiatry and is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Oklahoma Children’s Hospital. “It's a community that's stressed and with a lack of resources. We’re caring for kids in emergency rooms for days because there’s nowhere else to go.”

A response has finally arrived. OU Health, the university’s academic health system, is building something unprecedented in the state—the 172,000-square-foot Oklahoma Children’s Hospital OU Health Behavioral Health Center. Opening in late 2026, the facility aims to transform care for children facing mental and behavioral health crises and position Oklahoma as a regional leader in pediatric mental health care. 

The center will offer innovative and comprehensive care not currently available in Oklahoma, including short- and long-term care, crisis stabilization, residential treatment, day programs and therapies for infants through early adulthood. Adjacent to its partnering Oklahoma Children’s Hospital—the state’s only comprehensive pediatric hospital—the facility will care for youths with medical conditions or disabilities who are often turned away from mental health centers unequipped to treat them. 

Most of Oklahoma’s youth programs are limited to acute care or residential hospitalization, not both. And many cannot accommodate patients with medical challenges like diabetes, physical disabilities or neurological and developmental disorders such as autism, forcing families to seek care hours from home or even out of state. 

Far from home

Each time their daughter experienced suicidal thoughts or attempted to harm herself, Deer Creek, Okla., residents Rae and Bruce* were stuck waiting in emergency rooms for weeks until a bed became available at a facility that could care for their teen. Even when a bed did open up, Ruth was often denied admission. 

Ruth, who is now 16, has autism with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and migraines. Most mental health facilities are not designed or staffed to care for Ruth’s unique needs. 

“She struggles with her peers socially,” Rae says. “Bullying increases her anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.”  

Those symptoms became obvious around the time Ruth transitioned from elementary to middle school, her parents say. And they only increased. She began scratching herself and pretending to faint at school. One weekend, her only close friend told Ruth’s parents she was concerned Ruth was going to harm herself. That led to the first of her many hospitalizations, which included stays in northeastern Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas, hours from home and her parents. 

‘Safety, dignity and family involvement’

The new Behavioral Health Center will provide innovative mental health care designed around the guiding principles of patient and provider safety, family-centered care and stress reduction, Cowperthwaite says. Significantly, each room will provide overnight accommodation for one parent to stay with their child to support both the patient’s medical needs and the involvement of their family. 

Education programs will support parents during their child’s treatment and help ease the transition back home—a crucial time for youths who have been hospitalized. Parents will be empowered by learning about eating disorders and depression. They’ll be trained to differentiate between behaviors the result of typical youth development and those triggered by traumatic past events. They’ll learn their child’s anxiety language so they can help them build resiliency and learn coping skills. 

“This isn’t just about having more beds,” Cowperthwaite says. “It’s about building something intentionally and with safety, dignity and family involvement at its core.”

To bridge the gap between hospital care and home, patients and parents can return to the facility for a few hours each day or week depending upon their needs. Other efforts will aim to prevent children from needing hospitalized care in the first place, including an 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. program allowing patients to keep up with their schoolwork while receiving behavioral health treatment. 

The promise of academic medicine

OU Health is committed to providing research-driven, highly specialized care to families across Oklahoma. As an academic health system, cutting-edge research and ongoing education drive medical innovations and are critical to maintaining the highest standard of care, says OU Health President and CEO Dr. Richard Lofgren.  

“This is really the strength of an integrated academic health system,” he says. “The entire academic and research engine of the university working alongside clinical care is the promise of academic medicine.”

To date, state and federal funding, money allocated by the University Hospitals Authority Trust and private giving have provided $115 million of $141 million needed to construct the Behavioral Health Center. As construction charges forward, a plan to recruit psychiatrists and expand residency and training programs meeting the needs of Oklahomans is underway in the OU College of Medicine, Lofgren adds.

To train the next generation of healthcare providers and build a robust workforce to care for Oklahomans, the Fran and Earl Ziegler College of Nursing is establishing a track for nurse practitioner students to focus on pediatric behavioral health issues. Graduate programs at the Anne and Henry Zarrow College of Social Work will continue advancing the most effective, evidence-based therapies for mental health care, ensuring that the center is applying the best available treatment.  

“No Oklahoman should need to leave the state for mental health care,” Lofgren says. “Brick by brick, we are answering the needs of children and families.”

A new kind of care

At the new Behavioral Health Center, three floors of natural light and colorful spaces will aim to destigmatize mental health care for young patients and their families. 

Rooms are designed to feel welcoming, soaked in calming colors. Art, music and pet therapies, family counseling, patient group sessions and shared community spaces will promote socializing with other families and children facing similar challenges—a stark contrast from emergency rooms and hospitals that often confine high-risk pediatric patients to their rooms. And classrooms, a gymnasium, outdoor gardens and large outdoor play spaces aim to reduce the stress associated with traditionally sterile and isolating hospital settings.   

Each time Ruth was admitted to an emergency room, her already elevated stress levels would spike, her dad says. 

“It’s a reaction to how cold and unwelcoming it is,” Bruce explains.

While struggling to balance work and home, Bruce and his wife drove six or more hours each weekend to visit Ruth when she was hospitalized out of state and in far northeastern Oklahoma. They weren’t allowed to stay with Ruth; in most cases, Bruce and Rae weren’t even allowed to see her hospital room.

“At home, we were going into her room, seeing that empty bed and crying almost every night because our daughter is in a hospital bed somewhere and we have no idea what it’s like,” Bruce says. 

Today, Ruth is healthy and hoping to become a nurse so she can help others like her. But mental health can change “lightning fast,” her mother acknowledges. 

For Ruth’s parents, there is comfort in knowing that, if they need it, a new kind of care is coming to Oklahoma at the Behavioral Health Center—the kind of care they have wished for every day since her first crisis.

“There’s a peace in knowing where your daughter is sleeping,” Bruce says. 

*Names changed for privacy.

Whitney Bryen is a multimedia journalist who writes for InvestigateWest.

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