Mason's Lindner Center of Hope announces $30 million expansion campaign

The Lindner Center of Hope announced plans to renovate and expand its Mason facility as part of a $30 million campaign that includes new wellness and diagnostic assessment centers.

The center's leaders joined members of the business community to announce the launch of the campaign Wednesday at a news conference atop the Lytle Park hotel downtown.

The campaign has begun with pledges of more than $6 million, with $2.5 million coming from Corporex chairman William P. Butler, his wife Sue and the Covington-based development firm his family owns. The announcement also comes as part of Mental Health Awareness Month and at the waning of a COVID-19 pandemic that has brought mental health issues to the foreground, especially among children.

The additional money will be used:

• For a fund for building and retaining the center's staff.

• To expand treatment capability, by adding rooms and clinician offices, as well as apartments for patients who would benefit from inpatient programs to independence more gradually.

• To create an assessment center, a wellness center to incorporate healthy eating, exercise, and spiritual care programs.

"Financial support is critical to our ability to continue to provide high-quality care because reimbursements are generally below cost," said S. Craig Lindner, co-chief executive officer of American Financial Group Inc., and co-founder of the center. "That is the reason most hospital systems make mental health care a very low priority even though it impacts more people than any other serious illness."

The center, operated by a nonprofit along with UC Health, provides inpatient and outpatient mental health care, counseling and provides research for treatments of depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses. It opened in 2008 and has reached 50,000 patients in 13 years.

Dr. Danielle Johnson, chief medical officer of the Lindner Center said the assessment center will optimize early diagnoses, an important step to treatment.

"The evidence of mental health care consistently shows that inaccurate or delayed diagnoses leads to years, sometimes decades, of unnecessary symptoms as well as potentially harmful side effects.

Though the campaign calls for a $30 million expansion, the center intends to continue development beyond that to meet the needs of more people in the future, said Dr. Paul Crosby, the center's president and chief executive officer.

"We need more capacity," he said. "The fact of the matter is we're out of space. So either our providers' schedules fill up, or our space at the hospital fills up, one of the two. So we need both, we need more providers to provide care, and we need space for people to receive treatment."

Crosby said the center would consider any opportunity for expansion beyond Mason but it is currently focused on expansion and optimization of its current space.

"This is an announcement of our plans to expand, the need for us to expand, as well as the need for us to get community support, because we can't do it without them," he said.

In order to make that happen, Butler, whose donation kick-started the campaign, ended his comments at the news conference by offering a plea for financial help from more business leaders of the community.

"We seek the help of both corporate and charitable giving," he said. "You have one of the most outstanding mental health service providers in the entire USA right here in our midst."

The center has grown over the years thanks to donations.

In 2017, the Fath and Lindner families donated $75 million to the center to address mental health care needs in the region. At the time, it was the largest Ohio health care contribution since 2005.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Lindner Center of Hope announces $30 million expansion in Mason