The University of Maryland Baltimore-Washington Medical Center has unveiled a 10-bed expansion of its psychiatric inpatient unit, an addition that officials said will allow the facility to serve up to 650 more patients a year.

The expansion brings to 24 the number of beds available for patients to receive acute services in the county without having to be transferred to another facility. Advocates say it is aimed to help address the growing mental health needs of the county’s psychiatric patients and their families.

“The need for these kind of services has really expanded over the years,” said Karen Olscamp, president and CEO of BWMC.

“Twenty years ago the emergency department would do about 1,500 psych evaluations per year,” she said. “Last year we did 3,800 and admitted over 800 patients.”

But even with that increase of services, the hospital was transferring too many psychiatric patients elsewhere. Hospital officials believe if patients can stay in the community for acute services they are more likely to return for vital follow-up care.

Dr. Sandeep Sidana, chair of the department of psychiatry, noted that there are many needs competing for financial commitment in hospitals in every community, but “we were recognizing that untreated behavioral health issues have serious implications for the rest of medicine and the rest of the hospital.”

The hospital’s emergency room evaluates patients for further care — whether at BWMC or elsewhere — and has five rooms in its behavioral health unit, a secure section of the ER.

The new psych beds will take added pressure off the ER, Sidana said. The new section is primarily an extension down the hallway of the existing 14-bed, 7-room double occupancy unit.

The hospital’s psychiatric unit opened in 1989 and has treated more than 100,000 patients since. More than 100 staff members, from doctors to nurses and social workers to occupational therapists, serve in the unit.

It handles both inpatient and outpatient care, running the gamut of psychological diagnoses, from bipolar disorder to depression and anxiety disorders to schizophrenia, and more. About half of the cases involve substance abuse, but most are “co-occuring” — meaning there can be an underlying mental health issue.

Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis won approval in April to build a new psychiatric care center that will include 16-bed acute care section. The $25 million facility is targeted to open in 2020.

BWMC’s 4,425-square-foot expansion cost $4.5 million. The hospital received $577,000 from the Maryland Hospital Association Hospital Bond Program and $437,000 from the Baltimore Washington Medical Center Foundation.

Anne Arundel County has pledged $2 million over a four-year period for the facility.

County Executive Steve Schuh said that while the county is a beautiful place to live, there are many who face serious challenges.

“Four hundred will go to sleep tonight with nothing over their head but a tarp or cardboard. Ten thousand are chronically unemployed because they have no job skills. Twenty five thousand suffer from some form of addiction. Thirty-three thousand live in poverty,” Schuh said in comments at a Monday ceremony to open the new center.

“And 80,000 suffer with chronic mental illness,” he added. “Mental health is the precursor to all the things I just mentioned.”

pfurgurson@capgaznews.com