Profiles in Clinical Excellence: Behavioral Health

UH Clinical Update | October 2025

By Jeanne Lackamp, MD, DFAPA, FACLP
Director, UH Behavioral Health Institute, and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, UH Cleveland Medical Center, and Psychiatrist-in-Chief, University Hospitals

Jeanne Lackamp, MD, DFAPA, FACLP

University Hospitals has been on the leading edge of compassionate and innovative behavioral healthcare for decades. Our freestanding inpatient psychiatric hospital – Hanna Pavilion – opened in 1956, was one of the first inpatient psychiatric hospitals on an academic medical center campus in the nation and operated with distinction until 2007. Our Public and Academic Liaison (“PAL”) program began placing trainees into community mental health centers across the region in 1990. Despite changes over the years, our outstanding clinical expertise has continued and has emerged in new venues across our region.

From our inpatient units at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s, UH Elyria, UH Geauga, and UH Lake Concord medical centers; to services at the W.O. Walker Building; to community mental health centers, schools, and clinics – our collective efforts through the UH Behavioral Health Institute touch patients every day across Northeast Ohio. UH clinicians and staff members strive to live our values – to take excellent care of every patient, every day, in every venue.  Our mission is to be present across our community, and to take care of patients where they are.

As we strive to expand services for our patients, we are so proud of the new home for interventional psychiatry at UH Lake West, where patients who are not sufficiently assisted with medications or psychotherapy can access four interventional modalities: intranasal esketamine, ketamine injections, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Once we have all four modalities in the same location for ease of patient access, we will be the only system in the region to do so. Our behavioral health experts also are deployed across the UH system in innovative ways. You can read more below about our Collaborative Care model with the UH Primary Care Institute – an innovative and successful effort that will soon be expanding. Renewing and growing our research presence is another priority, with numerous clinical researchers who are excited about the path to discovery. As you can read in the article below, their patient-centered and groundbreaking work is well on its way to helping patients achieve better outcomes.

Another focus area is optimizing our training programs so we can educate future providers. The UH Cleveland Medical Center Department of Psychiatry is the academic core of the Behavioral Health Institute, where our impressive training tracks are housed. Offerings include our Adult Psychiatry residency program as well as myriad ACGME-accredited fellowships, including Child and Adolescent, Consultation-Liaison, Geriatric Psychiatry; and our internationally-renowned Forensics fellowship. We also are home to a novel ACGME-accredited regional Addiction Psychiatry fellowship training program, where fellows rotate in all three of Cleveland’s major academic medical systems as well as many community sites. In recent years, we also have worked intentionally to expand psychology training programs. We also boast one of the largest Public and Community Psychiatry fellowships in the nation; and the largest and longest running Post-Pediatric Portal Program, for providers who previously trained as pediatricians.

Behavioral healthcare is healthcare. And patients with behavioral and mental healthcare needs are seen within every aspect of medical care across our system – and within every part of our region. We are proud to work every day, with all the tools at our disposal, to provide evidence-based care with compassion. We welcome the opportunity to serve our patients, their families, and our colleagues through clinical care, training of new clinicians, and research to expand global understanding of psychiatric illnesses.