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Prioritizing Youth Mental Health during the 2024 Legislative Session

  • Children’s Mental Health
  • Uncategorized

By Cat Atkinson

The 2024 Legislative Session started with significant energy being poured into the Commonwealth’s mental health continuum. We are grateful for Governor Youngkin’s commitment to investing $500 million into our mental health system and are encouraged by his focus on young people in the Right Help, Right Now, Youth Mental Health Strategy; legislators have been following suit by uplifting youth mental health priorities across mental health systems.  

The Commonwealth has continued to reckon with the realities of the youth mental health crisis, attempting to find a clear solution to a multi-faceted issue. Crisis services attempt to treat the symptoms of an unhealed system impacting our young people. Young people continue to remind us that this mental health crisis is not new, nor was it caused solely by the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2021 Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health highlights that youth mental health symptoms and suicide rates have been increasing for at least a decade. Young advocates and data emphasize factors such as increased substance use, academic pressure, and structural injustices such as racism, gun violence, and income inequality, all as contributing to the current state of youth mental health. 

Paired with the continued workforce shortage, noting that 93 of the Commonwealth’s 133 localities are federally designated mental health workforce shortage areas and the lack of intentionality toward equally prioritizing preventative services, Virginia has unfortunately earned their ranking of 48th in Youth Mental Health Access in the country.  

The 2024 Legislative Session brings new investments in mental health prevention services via school-based mental health, crisis services, and workforce development, support and incentivization programs. The outlined budget items and amendments below are promising as we work toward improving accessibility for young people and families to receive the care they need and deserve, regardless of their identity, socioeconomic status, or locality. 

School-Based Mental Health 

School-based mental health (SBMH) services prioritize the mental health and well-being of students within a school setting by providing easy access to mental health services, promoting healing and destigmatization, and supporting lifelong health and wellness. SBMH programs are an opportunity to advance mental health equity, overcome the many known barriers young people face to receiving services, and be intentional about addressing the unique needs of young people within each unique local community. 

Voices has been following the development and expansion of the SBMH Integration Pilot and prioritizing funding that continues to address the unique needs of each division and locality. 

Budget amendments: 

Youth Crisis Mental Health 

Currently, there are only three Residential Crisis Stabilization Units (RCSUs) for youth across the state—St. Joseph’s Villa, Mt. Rogers and Western Tidewater. St. Joseph’s Villa is also building out the first 23-hour crisis receiving center (CRCs) specific to youth, scheduled to start operating in the spring of 2024. There are also budget amendments below supporting the development of an additional youth unit within the Prince William County CRC.  

These efforts are positive and are also inadequate; 2024 budget investments will continue to build out components of the crisis services system, however, it is important to keep a focus on crisis infrastructure specific to children and youth services.  

Budget amendments: 

Mental Health Workforce 

Voices’ priority is to attract and retain a culturally diverse behavioral health workforce that is representative of our young people and well-supported by Virginia’s behavioral health system. 

The Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority identified interventions that should be prioritized in recruiting and retaining our behavioral health workforce, including ensuring adequate Medicaid reimbursement rates, increased residency slots and funding for psychiatry, promotion of team-based or collaborative care, removal of excessive supervised training hours and expenses to supervision, and student loan forgiveness/repayment.  

Governor Youngkin and state legislators are taking the workforce shortage seriously by investing in programs and facilities that shift our system to train, support, and pay our mental health workers the compensation they deserve. 

Budget amendments: 

View Voices’ Bill Tracker to keep up with Mental Health bills that we are supporting and monitoring: https://vakids.org/our-news/blog/voices-for-virginias-children-2024-legislative-agenda 


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