The enormity of what’s going on at the University of Utah to confront and treat mental illness is in many ways unequal to anything in the world.
There’s the 162-bed psychiatric hospital on Chipeta Way that underwent a major transformation in 2019–2021; there’s the Kem and Carolyn Gardner Mental Health Crisis Center that opened last year in South Salt Lake to care for emergency and acute cases; and there’s the nearly-completed 185,000-square-foot Utah Mental Health Translational Research Center, a facility adjacent to the hospital with room for 100-plus of the kind of premier mental health researchers a cutting-edge place like that is bound to attract.
In the space of less than seven years, thanks to many benefactors — including the University of Utah Health system, generous support from the Legislature and numerous private donors — Utah is becoming the very epicenter in the battle against mental illness…