In February, the Los Angeles-based provider broke ground on a 27,000 square-foot addition to its main campus to house additional inpatient behavioral health beds. Once completed, Gateways will be the largest provider of acute adolescent mental health and substance use disorder treatment in Los Angeles.
The new space will allow Gateways to increase specialized services for transgender, intersex and nonbinary youth, and expand eating disorder and substance use-disorder treatment.
Over the past four years, Gateways has seen at least a 300% increase in transgender and nonbinary youth seeking care, Dr. Wong said. Gateways provides gender affirmation therapy, support in schools and family therapy to build supportive networks for teenagers.
“If you don’t have your family — and that’s supposed to be one of your most supportive arenas — where do you go? What we seek with our kids today is they’re going to these dark places, we see an increase in anxiety, we see an increase in depression, we see an increase in suicide in that population,” he said.
Gateways received $19.2 million in funding from California’s Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program to develop the facility. It is expected to open in 2027.
The project is designed to meet patients where they are at by creating an inviting space, Dr. Wong said. Most inpatient psychiatric facilities are old, and are not warm and inviting spaces, he added.
“Building a new facility is so important. It’s creating landscape, air and light where people don’t feel like they’re in a psychiatric rubber room, or where they’re locked up,” he said.
Gateways has the benefit of training nursing students, psychiatric nurse practitioners and psychologists through its partnerships with universities, Dr. Wong said. The training program allows the facility to train new professionals in working with specialized populations.
“We work with a lot of schools and students to train and educate people on these topics before they get entrenched in their years of work,” he said. “As we embark on [these programs,] that is even more important to bring in that training, and partnering with the LGBTQ community and programs. I think it’s important to hire people that walk the walk,” he said.
Gateways was founded in 1953, and provides care to children and adults in inpatient and outpatient settings at nine sites in Southern California. The system is planning to nearly double its capacity through adolescent inpatient expansion, and constructing a new drug and alcohol treatment center.
The guiding light behind his work, Dr. Wong said, is to give a voice back to those without one.
“The projects we get into at Gateways surround populations that have lost their voice, have been marginalized,” he said. “We try and figure out a way to give them back a voice, and find their compass.”