Notre Dame plans new mental health clinic in South Bend serving 1,500 annually

SOUTH BEND — The University of Notre Dame will dramatically increase the capacity of a mental health clinic it runs in a South Bend neighborhood, according to a Tuesday announcement.

A donation to the university will establish the Wilma and Peter Veldman Family Psychology Clinic, which eventually aims to serve more than 1,500 people a year. Construction of the clinic will begin this summer at the site of Notre Dame's existing Psychological Services Center, at 501 N. Hill St. in the East Bank neighborhood.

Notre Dame currently offers low-cost therapy to adults, children and families from doctoral student therapists, who are supervised by licensed faculty members in the psychology department. The flat rate is $10 per therapy session.

The new clinic will double the university's counseling capacity in the coming years, according to the announcement, eventually serving more than 1,500 patients annually. It will include three times as many psychology graduate students and additional top faculty to supervise them.

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The clinic will unite the work of Notre Dame's William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families, at 1602 N. Ironwood Drive, a suicide prevention initiative and a coming substance use program, according to the announcement.

In its recent 10-year strategic plan, Notre Dame outlined the need to do its part to address a nationwide mental health crisis that's urgent in South Bend. The university cites a study by Daniel Tadmon, an assistant professor of sociology at Notre Dame, that found that about 70% of Americans have better access to psychiatric care than South Bend area residents.

“Mental health is more than an urgent public health priority — it is a moral imperative that Notre Dame is especially well suited to address,” Sarah Mustillo, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, said in a statement. “That work can and should start right here in South Bend as we care for our community while simultaneously developing new prevention, intervention and treatment practices that will inform innovative care across the nation.”

The clinic will be in the same neighborhood as Oaklawn's new mental health crisis center at 415 E. Madison St. That 60,000-square-foot building is across the street from Oaklawn's smaller behavioral crisis center, in Memorial Epworth Center at 420 N. Niles Ave.

The behavioral crisis center is soon to be open 24/7 to provide a safe place for people suffering mental health emergencies. Depending on the results of an initial mental health assessment, patients could be referred to the main center for more extensive outpatient care.

Notre Dame's new clinic is named after Peter and Wilma Veldman, two immigrants from Holland who lived through Nazi occupation. They arrived in South Bend in the 1950s and started a variety of automotive businesses, namely Tire Rack, which is the largest online tire distributor in the U.S.

Money for the clinic comes from multiple Veldman family foundations, including those of Sharon and Matt Edmonds, Connie and Mike Joines and Anita and Tom Veldman.

Email city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame to build new mental health clinic in South Bend