1 week Ago
HAMPTON — Community leaders cut the ribbon Friday for a soon-to-open behavioral health center named after Hampton’s longtime sheriff.BJ Roberts Behavioral Health Center is a 20,000-square-foot facility with 16 residential beds, community rooms and emergency medical services and mobile crisis intervention units located on site. The center will offer care for patients for up to 23 hours with observation and initial treatments to determine whether further treatment is needed at a different or more intensive location.
The site, which broke ground last year, is an upgrade from the 11-bed facility it replaces and is part of a larger collaboration between state and local officials, and health care providers to improve access to mental health resources across the Peninsula. The center is awaiting license approvals before it can officially begin accepting patients.Officials were unable to provide details on the precise cost of the project.
Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board Executive Director Daphne Cunningham said during the ceremony that when this project began in 2020, city leaders could not keep up with demands for mental health resources because of the pandemic“The tension was palpable, and we were all exhausting every resource to meet the demands of that moment,” Cunningham said. “We knew that we needed to create a plan that would start to fill the existing need while also preparing us for the future.”Nearly a third of Virginia residents reported symptoms of anxiety or depression in 2023, and roughly 20% of the state’s youth have a mental health condition, according to Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services Commissioner Nelson Smith.
However, Smith said the entire state is experiencing a staffing shortage to address those issues.“This place is going to live up to the legacy of the man you’re naming this after,” Smith said. “People will come here broken, tired and weary, and law enforcement can get a break.
”Roberts served as Hampton sheriff for nearly 30 years before his death in 2020. He was also an outspoken mental health advocate and served on the Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board, the body that provides behavioral services to the Peninsula, for nearly a decade.Law enforcement officers such as Roberts are often very familiar with mental health crises, as they are often used to respond to calls for mental health emergencies.
The BJ Roberts Behavioral Health Center in Hampton, as seen on Friday, April 25, 2025, is a 20,000-square-foot facility with 16 residential beds, community rooms and emergency medical services and mobile crisis intervention units. (Devlin Epding/The Virginian-Pilot)However, Smith said that response can create a criminalizing stigma for people that need support, which can discourage people from receiving lifesaving intervention.“We encourage people to get help, we try to break the stigma, and then they get criminalized for it,” Smith said.
Capacity is another deterring factor for people to receive care, according to services board Executive Director Ryan Dudley. With staffing shortages and high demand, patients are often taken to the nearest available bed, which can sometimes be out of the area.Dudley said the new facility also will help communicate what resources are available locally to people in the hopes to ease people’s minds about getting treatment.
“Even though there are some local psychiatric hospitals, we still oftentimes have individuals who are being transported out of area,” Dudley said. “It’s really hard for families to engage, and sometimes people pick and choose whether they’re willing to voluntary get assistance. Sometimes, that’s as simple as we can’t tell them what that looks like or where.
”The BJ Roberts Behavioral Health Center in Hampton, as seen on Friday, April 25, 2025, is a 20,000-square-foot facility with 16 residential beds, community rooms and emergency medical services and mobile crisis intervention units. (Devlin Epding/The Virginian-Pilot)This facility will address both issues, according to Smith. The site’s mobile crisis services will co-respond with law enforcement to meet people where they are at and treating them in a comfortable space close to home.
“Sometimes you need to see that light. You need to see that hope, and that’s what BJ Roberts stood for,” Smith said. “Now, this could be that prism where people can see the light and see the hope.
”Devlin Epding, 757-510-4037, [email protected].
