Covenant Children’s and Texas Tech Physicians Psychiatry have opened the region’s first outpatient relational health center at Covenant Children’s hospital. On Thursday, Oct. 12, Covenant Children’s and Texas Tech Physicians provided a tour of the new center. Speakers at this event included Amy Thompson, M.D., CEO of Covenant Children’s, and Sarah Mallard Wakefield, M.D., TTUHSC chair of psychiatry and medical director of the Covenant Children’s Relational Health Center.
The center will focus on the mental, emotional, behavioral and psychological health of our region’s kids. Inspiration to open the new center, which opened late summer of this year, came from Thompson and Wakefield’s shared belief that relational health belongs at the hospital to improve access and reduce the mental health stigma.
TTUHSC’s Department of Psychiatry also relocated all of their children’s services to this center. Through this collaboration, new and much needed intensive services will be opened, expanding the scope of services provided in Lubbock for the wider region.
A continuum of outpatient services is provided by this center, from education and prevention services to group interventions for children and parents to individualized therapy and medication management. The center will also offer the region’s first partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient program for youth with mental health distress.