Plans unveiled for Huntsman Mental Health Institute clinic in South Salt Lake

New plans released Thursday show what an innovative mental health care center in Salt Lake County will look like, and the plans showcase how it’ll do much more than just help people in crisis.

A huge vision is taking shape for a large empty lot in South Salt Lake on 3300 South that sits near the county jail and Men’s Resource Center.

Kem and Carolyn Gardner described the plans, as they eagerly support what’s slated to become the first center of its kind in Utah.

They donated $5 million toward the project, and the center will bear their name as the Kem and Carolyn Gardner Mental Health Crisis Care Center.

“That clinic will be the first of a campus that will be developed,” Kem Gardner explained. “And the county is very helpful there, the county stepping up with land and money to help develop that.”

Renderings and floor plans show the layout of the 78,000 Huntsman Mental Health Institute clinic, which will be located on the future site of the Huntsman Mental Health Institute Campus of Hope.

According to a press release, it features a 23-hour treatment and observation stay in a 30-bed receiving center, inpatient treatment in a 24-bed acute care unit, opiate use disorder treatment clinic, mental health day treatment, and substance abuse disorder outpatient treatment.

Plus, Gardner indicated, services that go beyond mental health and substance use disorder treatment.

“One floor is being donated almost entirely for community service,” he explained. That includes a free law clinic to help families with a mental health crisis overcome legal barriers, primary care and dental care clinics, case management, and connections to community programs for housing, health care, and jobs.

“One in five Utahns suffer from either anxiety or depression or some other mental disorder of some sort, and there’s no place for them to go to receive help,” Carolyn Gardner said. “That’s why this facility is going to be a big help.”

The Gardner’s said a couple of their grandchildren have struggled with anxiety, and the couple has found it’s difficult to get help.

Charlie Ellis knows what’s that like first-hand, after an experience a couple years ago that he described as embarrassing and angering.

Ellis described how a well-intentioned friend hoping to get Ellis help during a mental health breakdown inadvertently caused a situation where Ellis was handcuffed by police and sent to the hospital.

“The fact that I was pulled out at gun and taser-point, etc, just raises the anxiety level,” he said.

The hospital stay only lasted a few hours, Ellis recounted, with a doctor deciding within a half hour he wasn’t a harm to himself.

Ellis remembered being discharged with zero resources, and no further contact aside from being sent a $5,000 hospital bill.

This center, he believes, could help change that experience for others in the future.

“Instead of just dealing with, ‘Okay, here’s the crisis,’ all the other people that have needs but they’re not being met– this is going to start reaching those, and people will walk out of these programs with an ongoing plan of treatment,” he expressed.

There’s also a research and training component to the clinic. The press release that accompanied the renderings explained how researchers will work alongside clinicians, patients, and their families as they aim to develop best practices for treatment and care, as well as new approaches to helping people.

Kem and Carolyn Gardner were particularly excited about that aspect, and see it as the mental health version of the Huntsman Cancer Institute as far as innovation and leading the way in treatment across the industry.

However, the project still needs to raise more money as it moves forward. According to the Huntsman Mental Health Institute, the clinic is about $3 million short of what it needs. The Gardners are hoping more donors step forward to help complete the crisis care center.

“This is a big effort because we’re at the last of the nation in terms of treatment of mental illness,” Kem Gardner said. “And we’re just really getting started, but we’ll end up being the best.”