CHOP has a new mental health center in West Philly. Community members want providers to spend time outside its walls.

West Philadelphians concerned about the mental health effect of gun violence on their children are grateful for a new outpost that the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is opening in their neighborhood. But in a community forum Wednesday, some said they wanted providers to engage with their new neighbors outside the center as well.

“I’d like to know whether you guys have a plan outside of that building to try to help these folks?” Pete Wilson, a community member and leader of the Sixth Ward, asked at the community forum at Lucien E. Blackwell Community Center that CHOP organized to share information about the new programs.

CHOP’s child and adolescent outpatient mental health services moved in July to the renovated old Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. building at 4601 Market St., a location intended to extend pediatric mental health care into a community that has been hit hard by the city’s gun violence crisis and lacks access to needed health services.

“All of you know what a hard few years this has been in West Philadelphia,” said City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents the area.

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A CHOP study from 2021 found that shootings in Philadelphia have a pernicious effect on the mental health of young people, with each incident increasing the number of emergency department visits for mental health complaints from kids in the blocks surrounding the gunfire.

Overdose deaths have also been increasing in West Philadelphia neighborhoods.

“We need them more than ever because our children are traumatized,” said Rose Bryant, a local community advocate who works with kids. “Help is on the way.”

The center will offer resources for youth experiencing eating disorders, attention deficit disorder, and psychosis. It will also include a “partial hospitalization program” for teens with depression, bipolar disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, or anxiety that will provide more intensive care during the week. In the past, families have had to shuttle their teens to other parts of the city or suburbs for that type of care — an unfeasible weekday commitment for many.

“I’ve seen countless examples of adolescents and children showing up in the CHOP [emergency department] needing this level of care and then not being able to access it anywhere close to home,” said Jason Lewis, a psychologist who specializes in mood disorders.

Lewis said he’s glad CHOP has expanded to West Philadelphia because he routinely sees patients from the area and is concerned about rising mental health challenges they face, including a “frightening” rise in suicidal behavior among Black teens.

» READ MORE: CHOP’s only psychiatrist for infants is worried about the mental health of Philadelphia’s youngest

Community members were welcoming but said they wanted to know how CHOP plans to be part of the community beyond having offices in a buildings situated within it.

“While you will be existing in the community, since you have your building in the community, my question is what type of engagements will there be in the community from you?” asked Richard French, who lives in the area.

CHOP providers acknowledged they had work to do.

“I was sitting here, and my immediate thought was ‘we don’t do that,’ but my second thought was, ‘I want to do that,’ " Lewis said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city’s push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org.