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Dell Medical, Austin Community College to launch mental health center

The Amplify Center will open this fall at Austin Community College's Eastview Campus.

AUSTIN, Texas — The Amplify Center, a two-year mental health pilot program, will launch this fall at Austin Community College's Eastview Campus.

The center is the result of a collaboration between the Austin Community College District and the Center for Youth Mental Health at the University of Texas's Dell Medical School. A minimum of 200 ACC students will have access to diagnostic assessments, individual counseling, peer support and more in the program's first year. 

After that, the program hopes to expand to other ACC campuses and even into other areas of Travis County.

“Young adulthood doesn’t fit well into our existing mental health care systems,” Deborah Cohen, Amplify Center executive director, said in a statement. “Our current mental health system was created to support adults who are already living with chronic mental illness. A young adult usually can’t access those services unless they are in crisis or have a run-in with the police. We need better solutions for this age group than what’s currently in place."

A Wednesday release from Dell Medical and ACC called the Eastview Campus "a medically underserved part of Travis County," and participating students with "more acute mental health care needs will be referred to Integral Care," a collaborator on the pilot program. 

“The Center for Youth Mental Health has collaboratively worked with community providers to propose a creative solution to address the gap in the care continuum for young adults,” said Kathleen Casey, an Integral Care senior director of clinical innovation and development, in a statement. “We hope this pilot is able to expand and fulfill unmet needs in our community.”

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