Two years after opening, Guilford County Behavioral Health Center sees urgent-care services highly utilized

The Guilford County Behavioral Health Center opened in Greensboro in 2021 to provide services for children, adolescents, and adults experiencing a mental health crisis. One of the goals is for it to be a more suitable location for those who might otherwise end up in an emergency room. 

The center’s most utilized service is for walk-in urgent care — it sees 300 to 400 people a month in this capacity. Director of Mental Health Services for Guilford County Debra Mack says the first step is an assessment.

“And from that assessment, the clinical staff sees what's the most appropriate level of care for them, whether that be outpatient services upstairs, whether it's for an inpatient hospitalization, or maybe they're looking for group home placement, or especially for adolescents usually they're looking maybe for a PRTF, which is a psychiatric residential treatment center,” says Mack. 
 
There is a 16-bed facility-based crisis area for those needing time to stabilize. Adults can stay for up to five to 10 days. The site also offers peer support groups for both mental health and substance use, led by trained individuals on their own recovery journeys. Mack says soon they’ll offer peer support focused on adolescents.
 
The center’s outpatient offerings include access to therapists, a psychiatrist, and medication management resources. Mack says that another goal for the center was to help the county alleviate what can be a long waitlist for these kinds of services.

If you or someone you know is struggling, the suicide and mental health crisis lifeline is 988.