EP 101: Designing the Immune System of Mental Health | Susan Swick

Design Lab with Bon Ku

Learn about how Dr. Susan Swick is challenging the paradigm of mental health, redesigning the future of behavioral health facilities and why every community needs a gym for building our mental health resilience.

Susan Swick, MD, MPH is the Executive Director of Ohana, designing and leading the development of this Center for Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, California. In addition to evaluation and treatment programs that are evidence-based and family-focused. Ohana programs will also emphasize the cultivation of mental health at the individual, family and community level. This Center is being created with the support of a landmark $100 million gift from a single donor in the hospital’s community, reflecting a recognition on both the hospital’s and the community’s part that the resources available to families seeking care for their children’s mental health challenges were sorely lacking. Dr. Swick has a long-standing interest in how adversity affects children and families, and in how well-timed interventions can make a critical difference. Prior to relocating to California in 2018, Dr. Swick served as the Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Newton Wellesley Hospital for five years. While at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, she created a new community health initiative called “The Resilience Project,” partnering with local High Schools to promote the mental health and well-being of youth and their families. She also directed the Parenting At a Challenging Time (PACT) program at Newton-Wellesley, a parent guidance program available to cancer patients who were still raising young children. She was an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she created and ran a course on Parent Guidance for the Child Psychiatry fellows. She attended Medical School at Columbia University, where she also received a Masters in Public Health. She, her husband and their four children are all east-coasters originally, but are happy to call California home.

Episode Mentions and Links

AIA 2022 Healthcare Design Awards: Montage Health Ohana Center

NBBJ Architects: Ohana Center for Health

NBBJ Architects: Hope, Healing, and Healthcare

A New Tool in Treating Mental Illness: Building Design via NYT

Donate to Ohana

Episode Website: https://www.designlabpod.com/episodes/101