Adult Inpatient Psychiatry of the University of Alabama at Birmingham is located in the Center for Psychiatric Medicine building.  We care for adult patients, between the ages 19 and 65, who suffer from acute psychiatric conditions requiring hospitalization, conditions that do not respond to outpatient, or ambulatory, treatment anymore.  Our patients usually get admitted through the emergency department.  Sometimes they come from other hospital services or other hospitals for treatment of complex or multiple conditions requiring high psychiatric expertise.   Our patients come to us on their own to get help with their serious mental or emotional problems but sometimes they have to be brought by others, their families, caregivers or emergency services.  We specialize in treating a wide variety of psychiatric conditions, usually in their acute or critical form.

Mission

Our mission is to improve the mental health and wellbeing of all our patients and their families by providing the best psychiatric care available, which is evidence-based and consistent with the highest clinical and scientific standards. We aim at delivering psychiatric care that puts our patients and their families in the center, care that is well coordinated, interdisciplinary and consistent with patient’s cultural norms and respectful of their believes.

Services

We treat a wide variety of mental conditions, usually in their acute stage. These conditions include but are not limited to:

• Schizophrenia
• Other psychotic disorders
• Bipolar disorder
• Depression
• Anxiety disorders 
• Delirium
• Dementia
• Other cognitive disorders
• Conditions related to or resulting from use of alcohol and other addictive substances
• Mental conditions related to or resulting from co-existing medical conditions.
• Personality disorders during their exacerbation

We have 49 adult beds located on three different units.

Accomplishments

The UAB Health System is committed to providing the highest quality of health care and is consistently rated among the best medical centers in the nation.

U.S. News & World Report – UAB Hospital medical specialties are ranked among the top 50 of nearly 5,000 U.S. hospitals.

Best Doctors – 323 UAB physicians are featured in the 2013 annual Best Doctors survey. The Best Doctors database includes the names and professional profiles of some 50,000 physicians representing about 5 percent of the nation's doctors.

The Best Doctors in America list includes the nation’s most respected specialists and primary care physicians. These are the doctors that other doctors recognize as the best in their fields. Choosing from thousands of the nation’s top physicians, six psychiatrists within the Department were included in this latest edition (2015-2016) of the Best Doctors in America. Among these were Drs. Lee Ascherman, Jacqueline Feldman, Peter Penherski, Samuel Rubin, F. Cleveland Kinney, and Richard Shelton.

Becker's Hospital Review – The publication included UAB Hospital on its 2014 list of "100 Great Hospitals In America", and it recognized UAB among the "100 Hospitals With Great Women's Health Programs" for 2013.

A Magnet Hospital – The Magnet Recognition Program certifies nursing excellence in health care organizations. UAB Hospital was Alabama's first Magnet-designated hospital and has received two subsequent re-designations.