King County is getting its first walk-in mental health crisis center

A new walk-in crisis care center in Kirkland for people experiencing mental health emergencies will start accepting patients in early August.

It’s the first center of its kind in the county and will begin to fill a gap in the mental health care system: a place for people in crisis to go that’s not the emergency room or jail.

“If you're the gentleman at home that has a drinking problem, if you're suicidal, or if you're potentially a danger to others — that you're just feeling aggressive and violent and kind of beyond your own control, that whole array can come in and get help here,” said Morgan Matthews, with Connections Health Solutions, the company contracted to build and operate the center.

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On the first floor of the center is a psychiatric urgent care unit, as well as a wing with 32 “observation chairs” for people who will need less than 23 hours to stabilize. On the second floor are two 16-bed in-patient units — one for voluntary patients, and one for voluntary or involuntary patients — where people can stay for up to two weeks. Government funding will cover treatment for people who are uninsured.

People in crisis can go on their own or with a family member. Police or firefighters could bring them here instead of to an emergency room or jail. Someone could call 988, and a mobile crisis team could pick them up and bring them here. An emergency room could refer them.

The goal is to help people stabilize before connecting them to services in the community that are appropriate for their needs, such as a long-term in-patient services, outpatient psychiatric services, a drug treatment program, or housing.

Everything in the center is set up with clients in mind, from chairs that can’t be lifted off the floor to shower heads that are flush with the wall to tactile walls that patients can use for self-soothing.

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“So many aspects of crisis can be so disconcerting, that even having something like a tactile wall can really ground somebody, and just help them kind of get centered and focused back on being in the real world,” Matthews said.

Matthews said that’s also the reason there’s no abstract art on the walls — only photos of the Pacific Northwest.

“We wanted something that was real, that was familiar, and we kind of ground folks in the space of, ‘Okay, I'm in Washington. I'm safe,’” she said.

The center’s operators plan to apply to be the first of King County’s five behavioral health crisis centers funded by a new levy. The levy funds could help pay for parts of the center's operations, especially for the uninsured; offer training opportunities for the next generation of mental health providers; or even buy the building the center is in, "which would allow us to serve folks in perpetuity," said Kelly Rider, with King County.