UNC Youth Behavioral Health Hospital

2 YBH is a 16-bed inpatient facility dedicated to providing comprehensive psychiatric care for teens aged 14 to 17 who require acute psychiatric stabilization. Our unit is designed to address the urgent needs of these youngindividuals, focusing on stabilizing their current crises and establishing a foundation for long-term mental health.
We strive to stabilize crises, engage natural and community supports, and develop comprehensive care plans tailored to each teen. By conducting thorough evaluations, ongoing monitoring, and individualized treatment, we manage and alleviate immediate psychiatric issues. Our approach includes addressing underlying medical conditions, administering psychotropic medications, and involving family in the treatment process to ensure a holistic approach to care.
Recognizing the importance of a strong support network, we actively involve the patient’s family, friends, and community resources to create a supportive environment conducive to recovery. Each patient receives a personalized care plan that includes strategies for further care beyond their stay with us. We offer various therapeutic interventions, including individual, group, and family therapy, to support the patient’s recovery and skill development.
In addition to crisis management, we focus on teaching essential coping skills to help teens manage stress and emotions effectively. By empowering them with these skills, we aim to help them navigate future challenges and prevent potential crises. We also emphasize the importance of reducing rapid readmissions by coordinating discharge and aftercare plans.
To ensure long-term stability, we meticulously plan each patient’s discharge and aftercare. This involves arranging appointments with community providers and making specific referrals to necessary care providers who will continue to support the patient’s mental health journey post-discharge. Our goal is to not only stabilize the immediate condition of each teen but also to provide a strong foundation for their ongoing mental health and well-being.
Through our dedicated and comprehensive approach, we aim to support teens in overcoming their current challenges and equipping them with the tools and resources needed for a healthier future.

Transitional Age Inpatient Unit (18-24) at UNC Health Youth Behavioral Hospital

The Transitional Age Unit provides trauma-informed inpatient psychiatric care for young adults ages 18–24 requiring hospitalization for safety and stabilization due to a broad range of mental health concerns. Patients work closely with a large multidisciplinary team comprised of many professionals including psychiatry, adolescent medicine, psychology, clinical social work, nursing, occupational therapy, recreational therapy, music therapy, activities therapy, animal-assisted therapy, pharmacy, nutrition, yoga, and spiritual care to identify treatment goals and create a holistic plan for ongoing recovery that fits the needs of each individual. Because inpatient treatment represents only one step in the journey to recovery, each patient also receives immense support in creating a robust outpatient treatment plan with our community partners to continue treatment after discharge.

Why pursue treatment on the UNC Health Transitional Age Inpatient Unit?

Specialty units offer patients the opportunity to receive targeted treatment for their mental health needs. Some of the most notable benefits of receiving specialty care on the Transitional Age Unit include:

• Expertise in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Mental Illness in Young Adults: The signs and symptoms of early mental illness are often subtle and can vary greatly from the symptoms seen later in the disease course. In addition, the young adult brain is not fully developed, resulting in differing responses to medications and other interventions compared to older adults. Receiving specialty care from experts who exclusively work within this population can help decrease the time needed to establish diagnoses and effective treatment plans, thus allowing for early intervention which improves treatment outcomes.
• Multidisciplinary Approach to the Development of Life Skills: Whether through developing communication skills while working with clinical social work, strengthening vocational skills through individual sessions with occupational therapy, or receiving tips on how to ease the burden of medication administration through psychoeducation groups with pharmacy, the team works to help provide patients with foundational skills that can translate across domains to foster independence and autonomy. In addition to the individual and group sessions that focus on development of life skills, there is also dedicated time built into the weekly schedule to allow patients to put this information into practice by having access to computers on the unit to spend additional time independently researching educational, vocational, and housing resources.
• Incorporation of External Supports into Treatment Planning: The Transitional Age Unit actively encourages inclusion of external supports (whether that be family, friends, roommates, significant others, trusted mentors, or outpatient teams) in treatment planning. We offer opportunities for team members and patients to meet together with these supports to provide psychoeducation, implement psychotherapeutic interventions, and create safe discharge plans.
• Instillation of Hope Through Recovery-Focused Community Building: Mental illness often leads to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and alienation. Through interactions with peers who are experiencing similar challenges in their own lives, individuals on the unit often begin to experience a sense of community that can serve as a spark for healing. In addition, patients get to witness others as they stabilize and improve, promoting hopefulness that may have previously disappeared.

Young adulthood is a time of transition, defined by changes in lifestyle, responsibilities, and relationships that can add to the complexities of mental health treatment. It is also a time of growth, where individuals can work to overcome obstacles by capitalizing on their strengths. The Transitional Age Unit strives to provide each individual who enters the unit with the highest quality of care.

4YBH is an acute inpatient psychiatric unit with a 10-person capacity dedicated to serving pediatric patients (age 10-17) with autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, or a related neurodevelopmental disability (IDD) in need of crisis stabilization. There are no other specialized inpatient psychiatric units for pediatric patients with IDD in North Carolina (or any adjacent state).

Inpatient treatment is most appropriate when the available care in the community has been exhausted or unsuccessful and patients are in severe and acute emotional or behavioral crisis. The following are criteria that may lead to treatment at our hospital:

• Imminent and significant risk of harm, including from aggression, suicidal thoughts or actions, self-injurious behavior, elopement, mania, or psychosis.
• The symptoms and unsafe behaviors require 24-hour monitoring and assessment for safety and stabilization.

We are dedicated to improving the health, quality of life, and outcomes for the patients in our care within a safe and therapeutic environment. Comprehensive care involves our highly skilled professional staff from Nursing, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychology, Pediatrics, Social Work, Pastoral Care, Dietitian, Pharmacy, Child Life, and Therapy Services including Occupational, Recreational, Music, Yoga, and Activities Therapy.

Utilizing a multidisciplinary team effort, it is our goal to better understand and support pediatric patients in crisis and establish tools, treatments, and safe and effective pharmacological interventions to assist in stabilization of emotional distress and unsafe behavior. By collaborating with caregivers to establish realistic routines and structure, identify sensory needs, and promote autonomy, our hope is to increase the likelihood of successful reintegration into the home and community.