New youth mental health facility to open in Lincoln

After opening an adult outpatient center in Lincoln earlier this year, Northpoint is nearly ready to cut the ribbon on a brand new youth mental health treatment facility later this month.

Imagine by Northpoint will begin providing treatment to local teenagers on Aug. 19 to help address a growing need for youth mental health services, combined with a lack of available resources, in the Lincoln area.

An open house will be held Thursday at the center, located at 3801 Union Drive near Northpoint’s adult facility, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. to allow the public to tour the new facility and meet the staff.

The center will offer outpatient mental health services to adolescents ages 12-18 through two types of outpatient care: partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs, said Lisa Anibal, the business development manager for Northpoint.

Intensive outpatient programs are intended for those who have tried other resources, like therapy, but are continuing to struggle with their mental health. Those who utilize this program are generally completing around three hours of treatment per day.

On the other hand, partial hospitalization programs were created to assist those who have recently been in inpatient care in their transition back to life at home, which can be a “big step” for them, Anibal said. These patients are typically in treatment for around 30 hours a week Monday-Friday.

“At the end of the day, we want to provide top-quality medical and clinical services that help positively impact the mental health of adolescents across the city of Lincoln and beyond,” Anibal said.

Northpoint, a substance abuse and mental health care treatment company that was founded in Boise, Idaho, in 2009, first came to Nebraska in 2021 when it opened an adult facility in Omaha. In 2023, the company opened a youth facility there, too.

“We saw a missing need to our continuum of care, so we opened our programs in Omaha,” Anibal said.

Then, based on a growing need locally and nationwide, Northpoint decided to further expand its services available in Nebraska to include Lincoln in April of this year.

While mental health has always been an issue, Anibal said the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the problem, especially in children and teenagers. Many adolescents had extreme feelings of loneliness and isolation during that time, she said, which, for many people didn’t go away at the end of the pandemic. At the same time, local mental health providers were overwhelmed by the sudden growth in people needing care.

Anibal said she hopes the new youth facility can help fill a gap in resources and help serve even more local teenagers.

“While the mental health needs of our children skyrocketed during the pandemic, the resources available have not kept up at the same rate, so we have more needs and less resources,” she said. “That’s why we found it exceptionally important to open our facility and our programs, and expand them into the Lincoln community, to simply help meet the needs of the adolescents in our community.”