Virginia's Youngkin aims to bolster mental health care, part of national focus after the pandemic

There's consensus in Virginia that the mental health care system is in need of reform, due to what Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration says is an overreliance on hospitalization at a time of growing need

RICHMOND, Va. -- 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.