AP: Virginia’s Youngkin aims to bolster mental health care




ICYMI: The Associated Press reported
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on Governor Glenn Youngkin’s bipartisan effort to transform Virginia’s mental
health care system.



“About a year ago, Youngkin, a Republican, rolled out an ambitious initiative
that aims to transform the way psychiatric care is delivered by creating a
system that allows people to get the treatment they need without delay, in
their own community and not necessarily in the confines of a hospital, easing
the burden on both patients and law enforcement,” AP reported.



Governor Youngkin launched the Right Help, Right Now initiative to get
Virginians struggling with mental health challenges the care they need when
they need it.



As AP notes, “Youngkin has since won bipartisan support for his ‘Right Help,
Right Now’ initiative and praise from advocates.”



The bipartisan budget Youngkin signed into law last year included critical
funding for the initiative, including resources for expanding crisis receiving
centers and stabilization units, reinforcing and expanding mobile crisis teams
across the entire Commonwealth, expanding Virginia’s investment in
hospital-based psychiatric alternatives, and building Virginia’s behavioral
health care workforce.



Youngkin recognized the one-year anniversary of the initiative in December,
calling for additional funding to bolster the initiative and announcing aYouth
Mental Health Strategy
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that addresses the youth mental health crisis in Virginia.




IN CASE YOU MISSED IT




AP: Virginia’s Youngkin aims to bolster mental health care, part of national
focus after the pandemic
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John Clair, the police chief of a small Appalachian town in southwest
Virginia, spends his days consumed by a growing problem: the frequency with
which his officers are tapped to detain, transport and wait in hospitals with
people in the throes of a mental health crisis.



Officers from Clair’s 21-member Marion Police Department crisscross the state
to deliver patients for court-ordered treatment, sometimes only to discover the
hospital where they were sent has no available beds. Patients end up boarding
in waiting rooms or emergency rooms, sometimes for days on end, while under the
supervision of Clair’s officers.



It’s a problem for law enforcement agencies around Virginia, one that
advocates, attorneys and leaders like Clair say ties up policing resources and
contributes to poor patient outcomes. In the past five years, these types of
transports have become the largest single category of case the Marion
department handles.



...



“We are against the wall,” said Clair, an Army veteran and former lay pastor
who sometimes shuttles patients himself, and did so last month on a nearly
15-hour round trip to a coastal city on the other side of the state.



The problem underscores a widely held consensus that Virginia’s mental health
care system is in urgent need of reform, due to what Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s
administration says is an overreliance on hospitalization at a time of growing
need.



About a year ago, Youngkin, a Republican, rolled out an ambitious initiative
that aims to transform the way psychiatric care is delivered by creating a
system that allows people to get the treatment they need without delay, in
their own community and not necessarily in the confines of a hospital, easing
the burden on both patients and law enforcement.



...



Youngkin’s emphasis on mental health developed during his 2021 campaign, when
person after person — from doctors to local officials to police — pleaded with
him to make it a priority, according to John Littel, the cabinet secretary
overseeing the Virginia initiative.



“It was just so clear that people were really struggling,” Littel said.



Youngkin has since won bipartisan support for his “Right Help, Right Now”
initiative and praise from advocates, though some worry about the pace at which
things are moving. The governor — whose press office says the initiative is
exceeding key milestones — cannot seek a second consecutive term and leaves
office in two years.



The initiative’s wide-ranging goals include building up the behavioral health
care workforce and working to stem the tide of overdose deaths, which claimed
the lives of an average of seven Virginians a day in 2022. Youngkin has signed
dozens of related bills into law and has secured hundreds of millions in new
funding, with more proposed.



The “foundational” part of the plan, as Littel describes it, is creating a
system that delivers same-day help to individuals in crisis, which should also
relieve some of the burden on police departments like Clair’s that are charged
with transporting most patients a court deems a risk to themselves or others.



Youngkin’s administration hopes to build up that continuum of care by
increasing the number of mobile crisis teams with clinicians to respond to
mental health emergencies and creating more short-term stabilization centers
for patients to avoid the need to take them hours away from their homes for
care.




Paid for by Spirit of Virginia



Spirit of Virginia, PO Box 3950, Merrifield, VA 22116



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