NYP Westchester Behavioral Health Center & Weill Cornell Medical Center Psychiatry Program (NYP-WBHC & WCMCPP) is a Joint Commission accredited, full service, 283 licensed bed psychiatric/mental health facility. It was the first behavioral health hospital in the nation hospital to receive recognition as a Planetree Designed Patient-Centered Hospital and achieved Planetree Designation with Distinction®. NYP/WBHC & WCMCPP is affiliated with Weill Cornell Medicine and serves as an academic, treatment, and research facility, providing a wide range of services for patients and their families and clinical education for future healthcare providers, including registered nurses, physicians, social workers, and psychosocial rehabilitation specialists.
For over 226 years, NYP/WBHC has served patients with mental illness. The first two patients were admitted in 1791 to New York Hospital in lower Manhattan. In 1808, a separate asylum was built adjacent to the main Manhattan hospital to care for the “insane.” The asylum was New York State’s first and the nation’s second medical facility for the mentally ill.
The Bloomingdale Asylum was a private hospital founded by New York Hospital in Morningside Heights and was opened in 1821. The mental health reformer, Dorothea Dix, visited the hospital in 1851 and wrote a blunt review that led to improvements in living conditions for patients. In 1894, Harper’s weekly described the hospital: “From first to last [the Bloomingdale Asylum] has been regarded here and abroad, as typical of all that is best and most advanced in asylum practices.” That same year, the Bloomingdale Asylum for psychiatric services relocated to a new facility in White Plains to an even more serene setting atop a hill surrounded by farmlands. The asylum was later designated as the Westchester Division of the hospital.
In 1932, the Payne Whitney Clinic opened in an eight-story, freestanding building on the New York Hospital campus in Manhattan and became affiliated with Cornell University Medical College. In 1936, the hospital in White Plains was renamed the New York Hospital Westchester Division. In 1990, the Payne Whitney Clinic moved into the main hospital when its original building was demolished to accommodate expansion of the New York Hospital.
Today, psychiatric services are offered in the emergency department and as inpatient care, with outpatient and continuing day treatment programs provided in an off campus building. The relationship between the two facilities – Payne Whitney and Westchester – has been maintained and strengthened over the years. In 1998, The New York Hospital merged with The Presbyterian Hospital to create NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The hospital in White Plains became known as NewYork-Presbyterian Westchester Division. In October 2019, NewYork-Presbyterian unveiled a new name for its leading academic psychiatric center: NewYork-Presbyterian Westchester Behavioral Health Center.
2022 Measures of Distinction
59%
National Board Certification Rate
96%
Percent of RNs with BSN and Higher Degrees
5
Newly Obtained National Board Certification
9
Formal Degrees Conferred
0
Nursing Research Studies in Completed
2
Nursing Research Studies in Progress
1
Professional Publication(s)
2
Podium Presentation(s)
1
Poster Presentation(s)