To the Virginia Senate, on Behavioral Health

On April 23, 2022, the Virginia Senate’s Behavioral Health Commission held a public hearing on the state’s behavioral healthcare system. Among the testifying community members: Jeff Brown of The Bipolarist, in attendance as a volunteer with VOCAL Virginia, the peer-run advocacy organization that has, for two decades, brought lived-experience voices into the Commonwealth’s mental-health policy conversations.

The Behavioral Health Commission, formed by the Virginia General Assembly, is the legislative body that studies and advises on the structure, funding, and reform of Virginia’s mental health and substance use systems. It is one of the few places in state government where a person with a diagnosis can speak directly into the policy record — not as an abstraction, not as a statistic, but as a name in the minutes.

The two minutes above are a fraction of a longer testimony. The argument: Virginia’s system spends heavily on the crisis end — commitment, hospitalization, emergency response — while underfunding the part that prevents the crisis in the first place. Peer support. Living wages for direct-care workers. Crisis plans drafted in the calm seasons, by the people who know what they need when they can’t speak for themselves.

Speaking to the Commission as a community member — not as a clinician, not as a researcher, not as a lobbyist — is also the point. Bipolarist’s position is that the people closest to the diagnosis are the people most qualified to describe what works, what hurts, and what the next legislative session should change. That position is not unique to Bipolarist; it’s the founding premise of VOCAL Virginia and of peer-led advocacy organizations across the country.