AUSTIN, Texas — The most beautiful psychiatric hospital he has ever seen: that is how Dr. Charles Nemeroff, a chair and professor with Dell Medical School, described the new Austin State Hospital.
The new facility, located in Central Austin on Guadalupe Street near 45th Street, will replace a facility that initially opened in 1861.
"That's very different than the original name of this facility, which was either the Asylum for Lunatics or the Insane," Nemeroff said. "It's the understanding that psychiatric disorders, the patients that we treat here, have a brain disease."
The state-run facility has three floors, 11 courtyards and private rooms for patients. Valued at $305 million, the new hospital is more than 381,000 square feet and has 240 beds. There are also spaces for art and music therapy, a salon and a sensory room.
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Mayor Kirk Watson believes the outside is a reflection of the kind of care patients will get.
"One of the key things about this facility ... when you walk through, it is the amount of light," Watson said. "That may not seem like a lot, but actually, it gets me emotional because of what it means ... to the health of the people that will be here."
Nemeroff commends the state for destigmatizing and addressing mental health head-on.
"The state of Texas has ponied up, unlike all these other states and have said, 'We have a problem and we are going to effect change in the care of the most vulnerable patients,'" Nemeroff said. "There have been rapid advances in new psychiatric treatments, new medications, new other modalities."
Medical students who have a required psychiatry rotation will be able to learn at the hospital and be part of a team that will help patients.
"It's almost a symbol of the difference that we're making in people's lives because of the light that we're now going to bring into their lives," Watson said.
Construction on the facility started in 2019. Patients will begin moving in this summer.
