About 5.2% of adults in Virginia, which is roughly one in every 20 people, live with a serious mental health condition.[1] The state meets its demand for mental health treatment and crisis response services through an extensive behavioral health system.
The Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) serves more than 200,000 residents each year. It operates 12 state hospitals and a network of 40 Community Services Boards.[2]
These facilities offer different treatment options to individuals depending on their symptoms, needs, insurance coverage, and ability to pay.
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The Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services oversees the state’s mental health resources. It works with hospitals and Community Services Boards (CSBs) to connect residents with the appropriate level of care they need.
Virginia currently has 40 Community Services Boards that provide people with behavioral health services in their communities.[3]
The health system offers many different levels of mental health treatment, which we cover in the following sections.
Outpatient care is the least intensive level of mental health treatment in Virginia. In outpatient settings, you attend your treatment appointments with a mental health professional but continue living at home and going about your normal daily activities.
The backbone of Virginia’s public outpatient system is its network of Community Services Boards. These are local public agencies that serve as the primary point of entry into the Commonwealth’s behavioral health system.
There’s a Community Services Board serving every single county and city in Virginia. These publicly funded services are mostly used by individuals who have Medicaid or little or no insurance.
Additionally, outpatient care is also available through private practices and hospital-affiliated outpatient clinics. The services include:
These services are delivered by qualified professionals including psychologists, psychiatrists, licensed counselors, social workers, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and more.
An intensive outpatient program (IOP) in Virginia is a structured step up from standard outpatient therapy, but it does not require daily treatment or an overnight stay at the treatment facility.
Mental Health Intensive Outpatient (MH-IOP) is recognized as a covered service under Virginia Medicaid. The state describes MH-IOP as a highly structured, time-limited program that is more intensive than traditional outpatient psychiatric care but less intensive than partial hospitalization.
The MH-IOP benefit applies when someone needs more than eight but a maximum of 19 hours of clinical services per week. These programs are for adults as well as for children and adolescents ages 6–17 when they meet the relevant criteria.[4]
IOPs are delivered through both private treatment providers and hospital systems across the state. Many Virginia hospital networks run day-treatment programs that consist of group therapy, medication management, and educational programming.
A partial hospitalization program (PHP) is a higher level of treatment than an IOP in terms of the hours you spend in therapy, but it also allows you to return home rather than stay overnight in a hospital.
Virginia defines mental health partial hospitalization as a time-limited, intensive treatment to stabilize acute psychiatric symptoms that provides at least 20 hours of skilled treatment services per week.
Mental Health Partial Hospitalization Programs (MH-PHP) are also covered by Virginia Medicaid alongside MH-IOP under its intensive clinic-based behavioral health services.
PHPs involve between three and five hours of treatment on multiple days each week. They are delivered by hospital-affiliated behavioral health programs and licensed private providers only. Every PHP is regulated under the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) licensing criteria.
People who need more support than outpatient or day-treatment programs but who are not unstable enough to require acute hospital-level medical monitoring can get residential treatment. This provides 24-hour supervised care in a structured, home-like setting.
The state defines residential treatment as running for an average of a 30-day length of stay. But programs can vary based on your clinical needs. The recognized forms of residential facilities include:
All residential facilities in Virginia are licensed by the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.
Virginia Medicaid covers Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facilities (PRTFs) and Therapeutic Group Homes for eligible members under age 21.[5]
Inpatient psychiatric hospitalization is the most intensive level of care in Virginia’s health system. It is reserved for acute crises like active suicidal or homicidal ideation, psychosis, and so on. The purpose of inpatient care is to ensure 24-hour hospital-level care and monitoring.
The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services runs 12 inpatient psychiatric facilities. Eight of these are behavioral health facilities for adults, and there is a dedicated psychiatric facility for children and adolescents.[6] They include the following:
Pre-admission screening and referrals to state facilities happen at the Community Services Boards. These screening services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The public inpatient psychiatric treatment system in Virginia, however, has been under significant strain for years. Therefore, Senate Bill 260 has introduced a “beds of last resort” provision which requires state hospitals to accept a patient when no community psychiatric bed can be found. The law also extends temporary detention orders from 48 to 72 hours, which gives clinicians more time to stabilize patients.[7]
You can access inpatient mental health care in Virginia in the following ways:
The state gives you multiple options to seek help if you are experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis. These include the following:
Anyone in Virginia can call or text 988 at any hour to reach a trained crisis counselor, free of charge. All of these calls are answered by Regional Crisis Call Centers around the state, which also handle in-person mobile crisis dispatch when needed.
Virginia’s 988 system is connected to the state’s wider crisis-care network. If a crisis counselor determines that you need more help than can be provided over the phone, they can connect you with local services.
Virginia has five regional crisis hubs, which coordinate the state’s regional crisis call centers. The service handled an average of 10,185 calls per month in 2024.[8]
Lately, the 988 system has been transitioning to geo-routing. This involves connecting a caller to the crisis center physically closest to them based on their phone’s location, rather than the older method of routing based on area code.
The Marcus Alert system is a form of crisis response specific only to Virginia. It was created in response to the Marcus-David Peters Act and is named after Marcus-David Peters, a young Black biology teacher who was killed by police during a mental health crisis in Richmond in 2018.[9]
The system connects 911, 988 crisis call centers, behavioral health professionals, and law enforcement so that a mental health crisis can receive an appropriate behavioral health response whenever possible. It applies to crises that involve mental illness, substance use, and developmental disabilities.
The purpose of the law is to reduce situations in which a person experiencing a mental health crisis is treated solely as a law-enforcement problem. The law also requires local law enforcement agencies serving populations of 40,000 or more to formally commit to backing up mobile crisis response in their community.
Marcus Alert has been rolling out regionally. It launched in five pilot regions in 2021, and additional regions were subsequently added by July 1, 2024, July 1, 2025, and July 1, 2026.
By July 1, 2028, every Community Services Board area in the Commonwealth is legally required to have a functioning Marcus Alert system in place.
For anyone experiencing a severe psychiatric crisis, emergency psychiatric care may be necessary. All hospital emergency rooms are legally required to conduct psychiatric evaluations and stabilize anyone in a mental health crisis.
Chippenham Hospital’s emergency room functions as a multijurisdictional mental health crisis triage center.[10] It offers medical, psychiatric, law enforcement, and community mental health resources in one location.
Virginia law allows involuntary emergency holds in the form of:
“Mental health services” refer to the treatment of psychological and emotional conditions. They are clinical mental health diagnoses, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, schizophrenia, and so on.
Behavioral health services include these mental health services, but they also cover treatment for alcohol, drug use, and addiction. The state’s 40 Community Services Boards serve as the main entry point into publicly funded behavioral health services.
A person experiencing both depression and alcohol dependence may need co-occurring treatment.
The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services in Virginia oversees mental health, substance use, and developmental/intellectual disability services together.
The mental health services in Virginia cover treatment for all DSM-5-recognized mental health conditions, such as:
AMFM is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
If you need to select a mental health care provider in Virginia, here are some factors to consider:
Medicaid in Virginia is known as “Cardinal Care.” It is administered by the Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) and now covers roughly 1.8 million Virginians. The mental health benefits are paired with Addiction and Recovery Treatment Services (ARTS). Pregnant women and children also qualify for Medicaid.[11]
Virginia law requires all private insurers to cover mental health treatment similar to the way they do physical health care.
If you’re uninsured or your income falls between Medicaid eligibility and affordable private coverage, you can access subsidized care plans through Virginia’s Insurance Marketplace.
A young adult who aged out of foster care can receive mental health care under free Medicaid with no income limit at all.
People with little or no insurance can contact their local Community Services Board. Emergency mental health services must never be delayed because of financial constraints.
Take a tour of our residential mental health facilities located in Virginia. Our locations offer peace & comfort within a residential environment where you can relax and focus on yourself.
Additionally, we offer both in-person and virtual outpatient services in Virginia so you can be supported after leaving residential.
If you require residential mental health treatment in Virginia, consider AMFM Mental Health Treatment (A Mission for Michael). We offer personalized mental health treatment for adults in our tranquil Virginia homes.
Our residential locations in Virginia all sit within a few hours of Richmond. The AMFM Mental Health Treatment team can also arrange drop-off and pick-up if you live within a four-hour radius of a treatment home.
All of our mental health residential programs in Virginia use the Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy (CT-R) approach. We help clients reconnect with a sense of purpose and identity while they also receive evidence-based modalities like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and more.
Our team of expert clinicians believes in treatment persistence and will personalize your treatment plan so you can achieve lasting, life-changing outcomes. AMFM Mental Health Treatment accepts insurance and is in-network with many major providers. To check your insurance coverage for mental health care, simply complete our confidential online verification form.
Call us at 866-478-4383 if you would like to start the admissions process or learn more about how we can support your mental well-being. Our compassionate team is available 24/7 to answer your questions and provide guidance with no obligation.
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At AMFM, we strive to provide the most up-to-date and accurate medical information based on current best practices, evolving information, and our team’s approach to care. Our aim is that our readers can make informed decisions about their healthcare.
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