Dr. Jennifer Havens , right, speaks with Dr. Fadi Haddad in the Children's CPEP.
	Dr. Jennifer Havens, Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Bellevue

Dr. Jennifer Havens always knew she was going to be a doctor. “My father's a psychiatrist and from the time I was an early adolescent I was taking care of my peers,” she said.

The teenager grew up and became a psychiatrist whose specialty is children and adolescents. She says if you understand children, you understand human nature. “Children are very complicated. They're like six different species depending on how old they are, because they're very different at different ages.”

Catching mental illness early can make a significant difference in a person's life, she said.

“Kids most commonly start getting depressed in early to mid-adolescence and they can completely derail. They can just stop functioning. And we can fix that. We should get kids with mental health problems early and do the best we can to support them,” she said.

Giving kids a safe haven when they are in crisis was one of Dr. Havens' main objectives when she joined the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital Center two years ago. This month HHC announced the opening of the new Children's Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program at Bellevue, the first of its kind in a city public hospital and only the second Children's CPEP in the city and state. Dr. Havens also helped open the first Children's CPEP in the state several years ago at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

As Chief of Service and Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Bellevue, Dr. Havens was a leader in creating the $1.1 million unit to address a dramatic increase in the number of children and adolescents coming into the hospital's emergency room in psychiatric crisis, from 155 visits in 1995 to more than 1,000 visits in 2009. The 24-hour program will be operational for patients later this month.

“Dr. Havens has a vision and skill to bring better coordinated state of the art psychiatric services to underserved and disadvantaged populations throughout New York City,” said Dr. Eric Manheimer, Medical Director at Bellevue. “She understands the extraordinary complexity of treating children with psychiatric disorders and the need for a first rate diagnosis and treatment plan plus the coordination of wraparound services to support the family.”

“She's a very strong, inspiring person,” said Dr. Fadi Haddad, Director of the Children's CPEP, who has been working with Dr. Havens for a year. “She's very dedicated to this project and she made it happen.”

Born in Boston, Dr. Havens, 54, is the daughter of Dr. Leston L. Havens, a well-known psychiatrist and author. She got her bachelors degree from Smith College, graduating with Highest Honors in Psychology, and earned her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. She moved to New York in 1986 as an intern at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. While at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in the early 1990s, she created a Special Needs Clinic for children whose parents were dying of AIDS. These days, when she's not at Bellevue, she and her partner spend weekends gardening at their home in Connecticut.

“My goal is for us to have the right place and the right people to help kids at these very vulnerable moments, and help their families, and really engage them in a therapeutic way with the mental health system. This Children's CPEP will allow us to do that,” Dr. Havens said.

November 2010