On November 20, 2024, Children’s Mercy and Camber Mental Health celebrated our joint venture with the grand opening of the new Children’s Mercy Camber Mental Wellness Campus in Olathe, KS. The private event gathered leaders from both Children’s Mercy and Camber along with media and other invitees for a ribbon-cutting ceremony followed by a reception and a chance to take a self-guided tour of the new facility.

This new 72-bed mental wellness campus represents a vital step in addressing the mental health needs of the greater Kansas City community. Discover more about this innovative campus and how children, teens and adults can find hope and healing.

The Mental Health Crisis in Kansas City

The mental health crisis in our nation has headlined the news and media for years now. Kansas City is no exception. There were more than 6,000 deaths by suicide in the state of Kansas from 2011 to 2023, with a statistically significant 43.6% increase in the suicide death rate. Sara Schlagel, Senior Vice President at Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health, emphasizes that the primary goal of the new mental health hospital is to save lives. “We want to meet the mental health needs of the community,” says Schlagel.

“We have too many children and adults who are presenting themselves in an emergency department with nowhere to go in a timely fashion.” – Sara Schlagel, Senior Vice President

“Children’s Mercy received almost 4,000 individuals in their emergency departments over the past year who were presenting with behavioral health needs,” says Schlagel. The ongoing emergency room crisis makes it crucial to increase the number of psychiatric beds and access to mental health services.

Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health is now a direct resource for those 4,000 individuals. They can now receive crisis care without needing to go through an emergency department or community health center. This means individuals are having their needs met faster. They no longer wait hours, days or even months to get the help they need.

Our Mission: How We’re Addressing the Mental Health Crisis

Addressing Kansas City’s mental health crisis goes beyond simply providing psychiatric beds to the community. “Our mission is to positively transform the lives of children, adults and families through compassionate, trauma-focused behavioral health services,” states Schlagel. “While we need an increase in mental health services along the entire continuum, our specialty is acute and residential care.”

Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health provides state-of-the-art trauma-informed and evidence-based services to children, families and adults. We help those we serve to bounce back from trauma and mental health crises. We empower them to integrate back into the community. They leave with the tools and resources needed to avoid a crisis-level situation in the future.

Elevating Care with Children’s Mercy

Camber has always been passionate about partnerships that best equip us to meet our community’s needs. By partnering with Children’s Mercy for this joint venture, we have been able to elevate our existing care. And now we can expand our reach to even more Kansas City communities.

Our goal in this partnership was to create a new mental wellness campus that provides safe and comprehensive care to children and adults. A place that prioritizes mental health care as health care. Schlagel explains, “We want to provide a comprehensive and holistic treatment experience that truly helps to destigmatize receiving mental health treatment. All while providing a space where people feel comfortable coming back and receiving additional treatment in the future if needed.” 

Supports and Services at Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health

Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health is a short-term stay inpatient mental wellness center providing acute psychiatric and patient care. This mental wellness campus provides crisis stabilization services to both children (ages 6 to 17) and adults (18 and older). The treatment ensures they’re medically stable and address their behavioral health needs.

Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health’s unique approach to mental health care utilizes comprehensive treatment. Patients are surrounded with a system of support and a team that helps meet all of their needs. Patients will meet with nurses, medical doctors, psychiatrists, therapists and case managers as needed. So they can make strides while in our care, and also prepare for successfully discharging. Patients then return into the community with a continuing care plan in place.

Unique Features and Amenities at CMC

Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health is a mental wellness campus unlike any other. Schlagel explains, “We have worked hard to take everything that we have learned about acute care for over 30 years to ensure we have built a hospital that is as safe as possible.” We’re taking a fresh approach to short-term stay mental health care.

Here are some of the ways we are intentionally addressing patient safety, comfort and outcomes:

Flex Patient Rooms: All single-occupancy patient bedrooms in this new hospital are designed to be flexible based on need. For instance, if more beds are needed for pre-adolescent children, we can quickly adapt adult rooms to meet this need.

Increased Exposure to Nature and Outdoor Spaces: This campus has six courtyards (two indoor and four outdoor) to allow patients access to fresh air and sunshine, both of which are valuable to the healing process.

Resilience Curriculum: The evidence-based curriculum used by psychiatrists and therapists at Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health focuses on providing individuals with tools that they can continue to use after they are discharged. This may include teaching behavior regulation, emotional regulation, interpersonal safety skills and executive function skills.

Adult Wellbeing Curriculum: To further address the needs of adult patients, we have added a well-being curriculum to work in tandem with the resilience curriculum, complementing medication and therapeutic needs.

Expressive Therapy: Art, music and other creative activities can be powerful healing tools. That’s why we have expressive therapists with specialized spaces to provide the best possible expressive therapy experience for our patients.

Half-Gym and Projector: In addition to having an on-location half-gym for participating in various sports and athletic activities, we have a projector system in the gym that can be used to play movies or host interactive games for people of all ages to enjoy.

Patient Safety Systems: Because safety is the number one priority of a mental health hospital, we have incorporated ObservSMART patient monitoring systems to keep everyone safe and comfortable, and we are looking into AI software capabilities to further expand patient safety measures.

Comprehensive Training for Care Team and Staff

To provide excellent client care, every employee at Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health from the therapists to the director of admin to the food service workers will be trained in our mission, vision and approach to client care. Schlagel shares that this ensures every employee a patient encounters will approach them with compassion and understanding. “Having empathy and being supportive of one another creates an environment that people feel comfortable in,” continues Schlagel. “We know that’s so important for the patients that we’re going to be serving.”

From the patients to the employees, we want to develop a culture of transparency and diversity. Everyone coming through our doors will have a different perspective and experience that they bring to the table. We believe that is a strength and a necessity in this line of work. Employees providing direct care to patients will undergo trauma-informed training and evidence-based modalities that are shown to keep everyone safer.

Who We Serve

While Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health is located in the city of Olathe, the services we provide are available to communities beyond Johnson County. We are also partnered with other KVC locations in Hays and Wichita to expand access to care. We’re able to streamline patient overflow from one hospital to another if needed.

Kansas City is unique in that it is a bustling metro city surrounded by rural areas. These more remote areas typically do not have a hospital nearby, let alone a mental health hospital. Families and individuals within a wide radius of our campus can come here to get the crisis care they need. We always do our best to accommodate those coming from further away.

Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health can provide gas cards to parents of children in our care who live farther away. This allows them to be actively engaged in their child’s treatment. The same goes for an important loved one of an adult patient who can help the patient heal. As Schlagel states, “We will do what we can because it’s the right thing to do.”

Our Hopes for Year One

We have high hopes for Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health to make a significant, positive impact on Kansas City communities. Our goal is to save lives and change the way people think about mental health care. “That is our plan,” says Schlagel. “To save lives and connect with people in a way that mental health services are destigmatized and people can look at mental health care as just health care.”

If you or a loved one are in a mental health crisis and need treatment, you don’t have to go to the emergency room or a community health center to get a referral for Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health. Call our admissions line at (913) 890-7468 to find out if you or your loved one qualify for our services. If we determine you or your loved one does not qualify, we will stay on the line until you feel confident about a safety plan and can help connect you with further community resources.

If you are concerned, don’t wait. All it takes is one call to get the help you need now.