At the Mount Sinai Health System, we offer a variety of emergency and inpatient services.

Emergency Services

If your child is having a mental health emergency—they are in a dangerous or life-threatening situation—we can help. The Mount Sinai Hospital has a Psychiatry Emergency Department that is open 24/7. We can evaluate your child and offer immediate help. We also provide these services at Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai West, and Mount Sinai Beth Israel.

We start by checking whether your child has a medical condition that we should address. Then we see how to help with any psychiatric issue. The conditions we see most often in the Psychiatric Emergency Department are:

• Anxiety
• Bipolar disorder
• Cognitive and memory problems
• Depression
• Psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia
• Substance abuse disorders

At Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai Beth Israel, we can care for your adolescent for up to 72 hours. This lets us evaluate your child thoroughly and stabilize the situation. Afterward, we may refer your child for intensive outpatient care through the Crisis Service at Mount Sinai Morningside. If the problem is more concerning, we may recommend the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Inpatient Unit at Mount Sinai Morningside.

We are also available to help any child who has been admitted to the Mount Sinai Health System.

Inpatient Services

At the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Inpatient Unit, we can diagnose and treat your child. The unit is located at Mount Sinai Morningside. It is separate from the hospital’s adult psychiatric unit. We work with your family to develop a treatment plan. The plan may include individual psychotherapy, behavior management, family counseling, school intervention, and medication.

Child and adolescent psychiatrists lead the team. Team members include registered nurses, social workers, psychiatry residents, child psychiatry fellows, licensed creative arts therapists, and other mental health workers. We also work with pediatricians in a range of medical areas as well as outpatient doctors. In addition, we have a public school program on our unit. This program is staffed by New York State-certified special education teachers.