WMRA previously reported on the Blue Ridge Free Clinic’s plan to offer dental care onsite this year. Now, mental health care will be included among the services provided at the clinic. WMRA’s Calvin Pynn reports.
Much like their dental program, the Blue Ridge Free Clinic’s counseling services were previously outsourced in the community, and medications available through the clinic’s pharmacy were the extent of those services on-site.
SUSAN ADAMSON: We’ve been offering medications since we opened four years ago, but counseling and medications together are much more effective at addressing mental health needs.
Family nurse practitioner Susan Adamson is one of Blue Ridge Free Clinic’s founders, where she also sees patients.
ADAMSON: …and so, we know that mental health greatly impacts physical health.
Counseling at the clinic will begin next month, with two rooms for therapists to meet with individual patients as well as a group therapy room. Like the rest of the providers at Blue Ridge Free Clinic, therapists will be volunteers from the community, in addition to counselors in training with James Madison University’s Clinical Mental Health program.
The clinic will introduce these new services during an open house event Friday afternoon, which will include registration for new patients and applications for volunteers. Adamson anticipates that more volunteers will be crucial soon, as Medicaid funding hangs in the balance through the ongoing government shutdown.
ADAMSON: We definitely are expecting – maybe even a tsunami – of new patients in 2026 depending on what the changes are with Medicaid. We may find a lot more of our neighbors who are, at least transiently, in need of healthcare.
That’s in addition to reduced funding from local grants this year, but Adamson said she isn’t worried.
ADAMSON: This is a place that just…it seems like when we need something, it shows up at the last minute. And we’re gonna hold it loosely, and just keep doing what we do every single day, and do the best we can with what we have.
For WMRA News, I’m Calvin Pynn.
