The number of treatment beds for mentally ill youths could double in Greater Cincinnati now that Children's Hospital Medical Center has closed a deal to buy a 10-acre site in College Hill.

        The $4.5 million purchase, announced Monday, is among the first steps of an expansion of services for mentally ill youths in Cincinnati.

        A year ago, the Enquirer published an in-depth look at the struggles many families endure trying to find help for children with severe forms of mental illness and addiction. Cincinnati's chronic shortage has forced families to send their children out of town for care.

        “So many of the kids we see are circulating in and out of the hospital because there aren't the kinds of longer-term services they need,” said Dr. Michael Sorter, director of psychiatric clinical services at Children's Hospital.

        The hospital is converting part of the 26-acre site formerly occupied by Phoenix International into a child psychiatric center.

        By July 2002, hospital officials plan to open 46 beds, increasing the local supply of child psychiatric beds by more than 50 percent. Sometime in 2003, they hope to open another 40 beds.

        Currently, the Cincinnati area has about 80 “safe beds” for disturbed youths — hospital beds and non-hospital beds in residential psychiatric facilities.

        With an additional 86 beds, Cincinnati gets close to the total number of beds now in Louisville, 220, and in Columbus, 180.

        Children's Hospital plans to start a project in 2002 that would double its outpatient psychiatric service of fices from 15 now to at least 33 in the next few years.

        “This probably won't fully address the need. But we'll really be able to help a lot more children than we're capable of now,” Dr. Sorter said.

        Psychiatric emergency visits to Children's Hospital have doubled in the past two years, to 2,800 a year. And a waiting list for non-emergency inpatient care runs four to six weeks.

        The College Hill site most recently was occupied by Phoenix International, a Canadian company that paid people to participate in clinical trials of new medications. For many years before that, it was home to the Emerson A. North Hospital, a psychiatric care and chemical addiction center founded in 1873.

        News of the Children's Hospital project first emerged in August after residents rejected a proposal from the U.S. Department of Labor to move the Cincinnati Job Corps Center now in the West End to the site.

        Phoenix International closed its Cincinnati operations in October 2000 after the company was acquired.

        Children's Hospital retains an option to buy the remaining 16 acres of the College Hill site.

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