A decade ago may have marked the nadir in the modern era of this state failing to care for its mentally ill. Longtime residents at Bangor Mental Health Institute were turned out of the facility to inadequate services and those needing help wandered the city, often ending up in the homeless shelter or in jail. Into this walked the many local founders of Acadia Hospital, which opened for business 10 years ago today and has been operating at or near capacity ever since.

Even as it was still in its first month of operation, its 24-bed psychiatric unit and 20-bed chemical dependency unit were filled, with only a couple of beds left in its adolescent wing. Unlike BMHI, Acadia emphasizes care for patients needing short-term treatment, but the absence of all types of care for the mentally ill in the region made it immediately a necessity.

The hospital now has beds for children as young as 2, expanded substance-abuse services and outpatient clinics providing therapy and medication in Bangor, Blue Hill, Lincoln and Pittsfield. But the mission for the nonprofit hospital has not changed. It still offers hospital-based and outpatient mental health care for a region that had been badly underserved before its arrival.

When built in 1992, the facility physically blended the former James Taylor Hospital with an impressive shingle-style structure. It was highly noticeable as a building, but much of its significance was invisible to the casual observer, in particular, its approach to medicine. The guiding philosophy at Acadia is to immerse clients in a range of services and support that links patient, family, medical professionals and staff to treat some of the most difficult problems that confront the health care system.

That the Eastern Maine Healthcare subsidiary has become an integral part of the state’s mental health care network hardly needs to be said. It has grown and served as the region itself has adjusted (partly) to the evolution of mental health care, and the hospital no doubt will continue to grow as the biological bases for many illnesses become better known. Ten years is not a terribly long time for an institution to exist in a community, but to understand the importance of Acadia’s decade, merely ask yourself this: What on earth would the region have done without it?