THE HEART of the MATTER: Huntsman Mental Health Institute launches a powerful new vision for mental health care in Utah and beyond.

• Author: Dark, Stephen

On a white board in a ground floor office in Salt Lake City's Research Park, a plan mapped out that promises to be a game-changer for mental health. Not only for Utah's premier psychiatric hospital where this office is based, but also mental health care across the United States.

Scrawled in blue highlighter in three columns across the eight-foot-wide board, the outline aims to tackle, among other key issues, three needs: the lack of resources that dogs mental health treatment, the dire need for psychiatrists, and the stigma that has long held back many from seeking help.

The author of this plan, Mark Rapaport, MD, a dapper, jocular third-generation physician, is a new arrival to the Beehive State. He was hired January 1, 2021, as both CEO of the Huntsman Mental Health Institute (HMHI), formerly University Neuropsychiatric Institute (UNI), and chair of University of Utah School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry. This followed a $150 million gift given to University of Utah in late 2019 by the Huntsman family.

"As the next generation charged with overseeing the Huntsman Foundation, we felt compelled to focus on the underfunded and stigmatized issue of mental health," said the foundation's Executive Vice President, Christena Huntsman Durham, when the gift was announced. "Our dream is to make Utah the mental health model that will inspire others across the country to emulate."

To do that requires profound change. "If we want to move the needle in mental health, we have to do things differently than they have been done previously," Rapaport says.

At the heart of HMHI is a 170-bed, full-service psychiatric and chemical abuse treatment hospital with crisis line, outpatient clinics, and an evening program for drug and alcohol abuse. Even that hasn't gone untouched in Rapaport's first six months. He brought together the departments of research and training and the medical director's office, which were at opposite ends of the building. "This united department is the trunk of the tree," he says. "The branches, the leaves, and the fruits are the projects and partnerships that will be part of the university-wide institute."

He's already wrapped up plans for an upgraded crisis care and receiving center, which recently broke ground in the heart of Salt Lake Valley. In addition, he's made significant progress on plans for a 185,000-square-foot research facility.

At the heart of all this change lies those in need--and their ever-growing numbers...