Treatment Programs
Utah State Hospital
Our Purpose
We provide a safe and healing environment in which all people are treated with dignity and respect. It is our purpose to assist patients to reach their potential through individualized treatment. We strive to meet each patient’s needs in a caring and professional way.
Adult Services
Utah State Hospital adult services provides the highest level of psychiatric inpatient care. Five 30 bed units, housed in the Rampton Building, provide pharmacologic and psychosocial interventions to assist patients in optimal management of their illness and increasing life skills.
A treatment mall located off the units, offers group psychotherapy and psychoeducational interventions that are evidenced based.
An integrated multi-disciplinary treatment approach is employed with collaboration between treating professionals, patients, and their families. Adult services clinicians work closely with the local mental health authority liaisons from across the state in the assessment of treatment needs, development of treatment plans, implementation of care, and the coordinated discharge process to return patients to the appropriate level of care in the community.
Pediatric Services
The pediatric services offered at Utah State Hospital include 3 units consisting of a co-ed children’s unit with 20 beds, and an adolescent boys’ and girls’ unit serving 12-18 year olds with 26 beds each.
Children with severe mental illness are admitted from around the state through their local mental health authority. The pediatric units are staffed by a team of highly skilled and board certified mental health professionals including psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, recreational therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and pediatricians. After a thorough assessment is completed, the clinical team with input from the child’s family create a comprehensive individual treatment plan based on evidenced based treatment. It is organized into treatment tracks which offer specific modalities such as individual, group, and family therapy, medication management, behavior support plans, and cognitive remediation specific for each child’s needs.
Each child is enrolled in a 6 hour per day, year round school program administered through Provo School District. Family involvement is critical to the child’s treatment at USH, which lasts approximately 6 months.
Forensic Services
The forensic services, housed in a secure building, serves court-ordered individuals in six different inpatient units, a jail-based unit in Salt Lake County and through outreach across Utah jails, prison and the community. A team of qualified forensic evaluators provide specialized forensic evaluations used by courts to rule on individuals' ability to stand trial and receive treatment to help individuals with serious mental illnesses navigate the criminal justice process.
The court may order individuals into forensic treatment services through the Utah State Hospital for a variety of purposes.
Most of the individuals served have been found by a judge to be ‘Not Competent to Stand Trial’. Treatment facilitates restoration of competency or a determination that an individual is not competent to stand trial due to the severity of their mental illness. Programming includes mental health therapeutic treatment and educational services, medication management, recreational therapy, nursing services, psychological services, and other medical services.
Individuals adjudicated as ‘Guilty and Mentally Ill’ receive treatment prior to serving their criminal sentence. As Utah is one of four states restricting the use of the ‘insanity defense’, only a small number of individuals have a status of ‘Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity.’
Philosophy of treatment emphasizes individualized care, integrating established evidence-based treatment for complex clinical presentations, tracking outcomes to improve services that also foster individual preference, autonomy, and family input whenever possible.
Clinical intervention is provided in a multi-disciplinary fashion, including board-certified psychiatrists as clinical directors (including subspecialty forensic psychiatry board certification with faculty appointments to the University of Utah), psychologists with advanced forensic training and experience, licensed clinical therapists and administrative directors, registered and advanced practice nurses, occupational and recreational therapists, employment/educational experts, psychiatric technicians and other medical staff.