CLIVE, Iowa — February will mark two years since the Clive Behavioral Health Hospital opened its doors. In those two years, the staff has helped more than 2,000 patients from across Iowa as well as helped reduce the burden on the overall health care system.

The 100-bed facility mainly specializes in treating people with acute mental health issues, which means they are going through an active crisis. It treats people of all ages.

The clinic’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Sasha Khosravi, said the clinic both receives transfers from local hospitals and sees walk-ins. People can schedule a free assessment online. They can also walk in and get help.

Khosravi said there are several criteria people should look for if they are wondering whether they or someone they know needs help.

“In any psychiatric diagnosis, regardless of age, a change in their functioning is really key,” he said. “So these folks start to have trouble with their jobs and their relationships are primarily areas that we look at. School, obviously, is a big thing that we look at in their functioning.”

Khosravi added the 24-hour behavioral health hospital also reduces the burden on emergency rooms because people who go through crisis outside of regular business hours would normally end up in the ER, which is not the best place to treat them.

“The emergency room’s already pretty stacked, overbooked,” he said. “They have patients in the halls. So sometimes for someone suffering from a mental illness, external stimuli, a lot of noise, a lot of interventions around them, is not very therapeutic for them. So being able to come to a place where they can get more immediate assistance, and hopefully get to our in-patient services if needed, would be in the best interest of the patient and really be much more therapeutic for them.”