Layered Stories
An Unprecedented Collaboration Between Patients, Design, and Art for Mental Health

A New Space for Healing, Hope, and Expression

In December 2025, the Montefiore Einstein Center for Children’s Mental Health (MECCMH) opened its doors—introducing a transformative, state-of-the-art model of care in which the built environment and visual art are integral to the clinical healing process. This inpatient facility provides intensive, compassionate treatment for children and adolescents ages 5–17 facing serious behavioral health challenges, including depression, anxiety, trauma, suicidal thoughts, psychosis, acute psychiatric needs, and high-functioning autism spectrum disorders. With its opening, inpatient capacity in the Bronx has doubled—critically expanding access to care for families across the community.

Where Art and Healing Meet

From the outset, artwork was envisioned as integral to the MECCMH’s environment of hope and healing —designed to support emotional regulation, reflection, and connection. The artworks throughout the center form a one-of-a-kind collaboration between New York–based artist Gail Garcia and young participants from the Youth Empowerment Series (YES) at Montefiore Einstein’s Child Outpatient Psychiatry Division.

Created by Youth, for Youth

Children and teens offer fragments of their lived experience- moments of place, movement, and feeling-through painting and photographs of their own neighborhoods. Artist Gail Garcia continued layering these stories with graphic design, creating a wonderful, welcoming journey throughout the MECCMH. Each work was created specifically for this space. Every wall contains layered stories that invite connection, communication, conversation, and quiet reflection.

You Are Not Alone

Together, these works create an environment where children and teens can recognize themselves, sense the presence of others, and find reassurance in shared experience—supporting understanding, belonging, and hope as part of the healing journey.