New York's Bellevue Hospital is taking a new step to help children who don't require hospitalization but need more than a weekly psychiatrist visit.
The city's first lady, Chirlane McCray, and health officials spotlighted Bellevue's "partial hospitalization" program on Tuesday.
It incorporates therapy and Bellevue's longstanding on-site school in a day program for children ages 6 to 17 but lets them go home at night. They can attend for up to two months. It aims to treat about 550 children a year.
McCray says the new initiative "will bridge the gap between hospitalization and outpatient care."
It intensifies and more than doubles the size of a previous day program. Bellevue has long been a leader in treating mentally ill children. It opened an adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit in 1937.
