East Alabama Medical Center opens $44 million mental health facility

East Alabama Medical Center opens $44 million mental health facility Opelika Al. (WTVM) - East Alabama Medical Center has invested $44 million in expanding mental health resources with a new facility that will increase patient capacity and reduce emergency room wait times. The new building will accommodate 40 patients, compared to the current 28-bed capacity.

Officials said the facility has been in development for several years and is expected to begin admitting patients in January. The East Alabama mental health facility treats at least 2,000 patients annually.

The expansion addresses a critical shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds across the region. “Across the state and across the nation those inpatient beds for patients within patient psychiatric needs. The need has been far exceeding the supply,” said Sarah Nunnelly, chief strategy officer at East Alabama Health.

The current mental health facility in the hospital was built in 1959 with limited space for staff operations. The new facility provides additional workspace alongside increased bed capacity.

Hospital officials said the expansion will alleviate pressure on emergency departments and reduce patient boarding situations. “There are lots of situations where patients are boarding the emergency departments and sometimes the jails. A lot of the times they are turned away because they can’t travel to another hospital in another part of the state.

So it creates a hardship on the families,” said Debbie Breckenridge, clinical therapy manager. Breckenridge said demand consistently exceeds capacity at the current facility. “When someone is discharged we usually have two or three people waiting to be admitted.

The access to care will hopefully improve, we will have more beds, so the time waiting in the emergency department will hopefully be a lot shorter,” she said. Nunnelly said demand for mental health services has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. “We feel the responsibility to care for patients in our community and we’ve only seen that demand for services grow especially since Covid,” she said.

Source: https://www.wtvm.com/2025/12/24/east-alabama-medical-center-opens-44-million-mental-health-facility/