MENTAL health care is to be improved on Teesside with the creation of an acute admissions unit at St Luke's Hospital, Middlesbrough.
There will be hotel-style sleeping accommodation in separate male and female areas on the first floor, with day rooms and dining rooms, improved occupational therapy and therapeutic facilities on the ground floor.
Subject to planning permission, work will begin in the new year.
Jim Paterson, locality mental health director, said: "The changes will allow health care professionals to further develop their therapeutic skills for the benefit of patients, in a way the current layout of this old hospital does not allow."
The facelift is the result of guidance from the NHS on modernising mental health services.
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