A specialized approach to mental health crisis care at HUP–Cedar
Penn’s Southwest Philadelphia crisis response center has expanded access, eased emergency department crowding, and connected more patients to ongoing mental health support.
2 min. read
Someone is revived after a drug overdose but is frightened, confused, shaking, and desperate to avoid falling back into addiction. Another has cycled repeatedly through emergency department visits, homelessness, and substance use relapses, and needs stabilization and connection to longer-term care. Yet another is brought by police at the urging of family after their behavior has become a danger to themselves or others.
Stephanie Hollister (right) is the assistant vice president of behavioral health for the Cedar Avenue Crisis Response Center.
(Image: Courtesy of Penn Medicine News)
These are different crises, but they share a common reality: the need for immediate, specialized care in a setting equipped to respond.
A mental health crisis rarely arrives in a form that feels orderly. For patients and their loved ones, it can mean fear, confusion, escalating symptoms, and urgent questions about where to turn for help. Too often, hospital emergency departments become that entry point, even though they are not always designed to provide the specialized, therapeutic environment that psychiatric crises require.
Crisis response centers like HUP–Cedar and its companion CRC at Pennsylvania Hospital have emerged as one approach to improving how patients access and move through mental health care, offering rapid assessment, stabilization, and connection to ongoing support in a setting designed specifically for emergency psychiatric care.
“One area we are really interested in is the idea of mental health urgent care, where patients can actually begin treatment when they arrive,” says Katie Dalke, the Benjamin Rush Associate Professor in Clinical Psychiatry and vice chair for Clinical Operations in Psychiatry. “Whereas at a CRC, the model is less about starting treatment and more about connecting patients to treatment elsewhere in the system.”
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