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Mental health care has come a long way from the images of the Oregon State Hospital seared into people’s minds in the 1975 film 鈥淥ne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.鈥�

Today’s modern facilities focus on soothing color palettes, art and music therapy. Patients are not physically restrained. Both outside and in, facilities more closely resemble a sprawling hotel than a hulking Italianate structure.

One of these new behavioral health hospitals opened in Vancouver, Washington, recently. General contractor , a 53,278-square-foot facility, on a former greenfield at 2805 N.E. 129th St.

The hospital features 72 in-patient beds, two to a room, in three separate pods. It was designed by Dallas-based GUIDE Architecture and has ample treatment and support space along with indoor and outdoor patient amenities to provide yoga, art, movement and pet therapy as well as nutritional counseling.

鈥淚 worked with Andersen when I was in Portland at Sunnyside, and I love these guys,鈥� Rainier Springs CEO Gary Peterson said. 鈥淚 think you’ll see they did a really, really nice job.鈥�

Patient services cover full and partial hospitalization, outpatient care, addiction treatment and counseling, peer support and more.

The facility is owned and operated by Springstone, a Louisville, Kentucky-based developer and operator of behavioral health hospitals. The company has hospitals at 16 locations in Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina and Washington.

Rainier Springs’ design strives to present a comfortable, hotel-like setting for both patients and staff. But there is more to a project like this, of course.

鈥淭here are safety features built into everything,鈥� Peterson said.

For instance, the so-called piano hinge used in virtually all doorways features a single long piece of metal running the length of the door. This eliminates the loops created by three separate hinges 鈥� loops through which potential ligatures could be placed and used by a suicidal individual to harm himself or herself. The piano hinge can even be removed from the outside of a room to allow removal of the entire door.

In the bathrooms, even water faucets are designed to eliminate the ability to loop a ligature around the taps. The same is true of even the handrails on the bathroom walls.

鈥淲e tried to eliminate as many ligature risks as possible,鈥� Peterson said. 鈥淔rom the design of the faucets, the design of the toilets, even the grab bars, you can’t put your fingers through it. It’s still ADA compliant, but you couldn’t slide something through there to loop it around and harm yourself.鈥�

On the flip side, the hospital also features the generous use of floor-to-ceiling windows, skylights and other features to allow natural light to enter the building.

鈥淵ou’ll see the natural lighting,鈥� Peterson said. 鈥淭hese areas are all secure, and all of our patient rooms are outside-facing. So they’re all along the outside and everyone has an outside view, and then the common spaces all have skylights, so there are lots of opportunities for natural light.鈥�