Youngkin Unveils New Plan, Announces $230 Million for Behavioral Health in Virginia

Gov. Glenn Youngkin will propose $230 million in his upcoming budget amendments to bolster Virginia’s behavioral health system and build crisis care capacity as part of a three-year plan unveiled Wednesday.

Youngkin’s plan, titled “Right Help, Right Now,” is aiming to reshape the state’s strained behavioral health care system. The plan outlines a six-pronged approach – ensuring same-day care for individuals in a behavioral health crisis, relieving the burden of law enforcement and decriminalizing behavioral health, building capacity for treatment beyond hospitals, targeting substance use disorder treatment, prioritizing the behavioral workforce in underserved communities and innovating crisis care services.

Elements of the plan include creating 34 new mobile crisis units to respond to 988 calls, increasing short-term crisis bed capacity by 25%, expanding telehealth psychiatric care in schools, increasing the number of crisis receiving centers in underserved communities and providing funding to support and retain the state’s behavioral health workforce.

“We have a crisis, and our behavioral health system is not equipped to deal with it. So the work starts today,” Youngkin said Wednesday from Richmond. “We’re starting today to stand on the shoulders of a broad bipartisan effort to strengthen behavioral health and the Commonwealth that has taken place over the last 15 years.”

Youngkin’s outline of his new behavioral health plan came just one day before the governor is set to announce his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. The state ended the previous fiscal year with a nearly $2 billion general fund surplus.

The governor’s plan comes as Virginia is facing a shortage of behavioral health professionals. An assessment released in January found that 93 of the state’s 133 localities are “federally designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas.” Over one-third of the state’s population – roughly 3.2 million Virginians – live in those localities…. (Excerpt from The Virginia Star)