To Rally Richmond: Mental Health Advocacy Day

Each year, there is a Mental Health Advocacy Day that takes place at the General Assembly Building in Richmond. This day is hosted by many mental health advocacy groups, including NAMI Virginia; VOCAL; Mental Health America Virginia; and Voices for Virginia's Children. It usually takes place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but this year it was held January 27.

We visit with our respective legislators to encourage them to support various bills and funding that promotes progress in building a sound mental health system in Virginia. My visits always include increasing funding for the mental health system in Virginia, especially youth and young adults. However, this year, it included asking for my local legislators to vote against closing Catawba Hospital. Catawba Hospital is the local state mental health hospital where I live. The proposed plan is to the close Catawba Hospital and the Piedmont Geriatric Hospital due to needing renovations that is estimated to cost around 94 million dollars in favor of increasing funding for community mental health services. The patients at Catawba Hospital (and Piedmont Geriatric Hospital) would be moved to the community, including long term patients there. That is not a good idea. First, aside from community service boards, some mental health services don't accept patients with certain diagnoses. That seems so menial in this battle; but, it is true. Personality disorders are one type of mental health condition that most clinicians do not want to work with and some, not all, insurance companies will not cover treatment costs for them. Personality disorders are common, however; approximately 1 in 10 people has some type of personality disorder. Second, some patients at state hospitals are there long term due to severe mental illness that leave them with low functioning. They would not be able to function in a community setting as they would require 24/7 care and monitoring. Third, an amendment to the law in Virginia was recently passed that state hospitals would be a back up to accepting patients that a bed was not found in a community hospital. Closing Catawba Hospital and Piedmont Geriatric Hospital drastically decreases the number of beds available.

Our local legislators are against closing Catawba Hospital, which sounds promising; however, there are legislators in other parts of the state that do not agree. One can hope that our rational against closing these facilities can persuade other legislators into voting against closing Catawba Hospital rather than another tragedy occurring before they decide otherwise. It will be an issue that I will continue to watch.

After meeting with legislators, we went to the Capital Building to watch the House of Delegates and Senate in action. The original plan was to split up and half the mental health advocacy group go to the Senate and the other the House of Delegates. It worked out that everyone went to the House of Delegates. Delegate Joseph Yost (representing Giles County, City of Radford, and parts of Montgomery and Pulaski Counties) introduced us. I ended up sitting in a viewing room as by the time I got back to the Capital from putting money in the parking meter (I parked on 5th Street), the chamber was full.

It was a good day and I am very proud of my involvement with NAMI Virginia as a mental health advocate.

Youth MOVE Virginia Representation

Youth MOVE Virginia Representation

The Capital Building from Bank Street Entrance

The Capital Building