Clarity Child Guidance Center, the region’s only nonprofit provider of mental health care exclusively for children, has added an outpatient therapy facility and also created a new home for the Health Science Center’s Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Clarity’s new Outpatient Therapy Building, which opened April 19, completes the third and final phase of a $22 million expansion project that began in September 2015. Previous phases include the addition of a crisis assessment center, more inpatient beds, a gymnasium and an expanded day treatment facility.
“Having the region’s preeminent child and adolescent psychiatry researchers and professors here on our campus is the next step in the 40-year relationship we have built with the Health Science Center,” said Clarity president and CEO Fred Hines. “It creates a synergy that will enhance the level of care offered to children in our community today and in the future.”
Clarity has long maintained an educational and research partnership with the Health Science Center.
“Clarity CGC offers an outstanding opportunity to teach future child and adolescent psychiatrists in a leading-edge model for children’s mental health care,” said Steven Pliszka, M.D., chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the Health Science Center.
The new, 33,750-square-foot building allows Clarity to relocate an existing outpatient clinic to the main campus from its former location approximately two miles away, consolidating resources and providing more efficient care. Children who receive treatment in Clarity CGC’s hospital or day treatment center can now stay on the main campus for their continuum of care instead of going off-site to another facility. Clarity CGC serves 6,000 of its planned 9,000 patients through outpatient therapy and delivers approximately 40,000 appointments each year.
The new building will also provide space for family therapy sessions, teen groups, dyslexia testing and other services.
In 2015, Clarity provided treatment to nearly 8,000 kids ages 3-17 in Bexar County. Clarity CGC is the only nonprofit mental health treatment center in South Texas specializing in the treatment of children and adolescents struggling with serious mental, emotional or behavioral problems. As a nonprofit organization and a United Way agency, Clarity helps children regardless of their parents’ ability to pay.
In addition to comprehensive outpatient services, Clarity also offers 24/7 acute care inpatient treatment at its campus in the South Texas Medical Center.