Senator Creigh Deeds: How A Virginia Senator Turns Grief Into Behavioral Health Law

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Join us in transforming the world, one story at a time. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantur. Welcome to Why Not Me? Crafting justice,
empowering autism and mental health through legislation. Joining us today
is Virginia State Senator Creededs, a dedicated public servant with
over three decades of impactful leadership representing Virginia's eleventh District.
Senator Deeds has championed mental health reform driven by personal tragedy,
and passed more bills than any other legislator in the Commonwealth.
From his roots and growing up on a farm to
his influential role as the chair of the Behavioral Health Commission.
His commitment to working families, education, and progressive change has
made him a trusted voice in Virginia politics. Thanks for coming.
On, sure, thanks for having me.
Oh, it's my pleasure. I understand that you're an advocate
for mental health. Could you give the listeners a little
information on what led you to doing what you are
doing today.
Well, my name is Creed Deeds. I've been in the
state Senate since two thousand and one. I was in
how some delegates before that first elective legislature ninety one.
For the most part, for a lot of the years
I've been involved, legislative interests have not been a lot
different from other legislators. Find ways to promote economic growth,
finding ways to support school divisions. I've represented a rural district.
I still do largely so economics develop as hard in
rural areas, schools are sometimes lagging. You've got to make
sure our kids can compete. So that's been my focus.
A bunch of years ago, my son was diagnosed with
mental littleness. We went through an interesting journey to try
to get him treatment. When he died, I became a
little more interested and more focused on this on mental health. Certainly,
I've worked in mental health and that bring in that
area for a long time. You know, we have In
two thousand and seven, we had the tragedy of Virginia Tech.
That was preventable, but a lot of these tragedies are.
The kid there was known by many differ front mental
health entities to have problems, but they didn't talk to
one another, and he committed a terrible tragedy. So we
were involved after that, but certainly after my son died,
I got more involved.
Can you give us a little more insight and information
about your son.
My son was an incredibly talented and capable kid. He
grew up pretty asthmatic, and so he had some physical limitations,
but he overcame those and he became a star athlete.
He was very musical. He was a valictorian of his
class in high school, and he went to Waven the area.
He was on deanslist down there. He took a year
off after his first couple of years of college, he
took a semester off. I was running for governor at
the time, and he worked with me worked on that campaign,
and then the next few months he was struggling emotionally
and ended up getting the diagnosis. So he would have
been about twenty one, I guess when he first was diagnosed,
and he died when he was twenty four.
I'm so sorry to hear about that.
With how you just described Tim, you have had more
lived experience than most senators the legislators will have. So
how do you use this to get across to other
senators and the legislators of what you've gone through along
with what others are going through now, so to create
some legislation that will help all of those, hopefully that
need help.
You know, I've been in the legislature a long time.
Everybody knows me, and well, I'm probably not the most
social person in the world, more of the most friendly
all the time. I'm pretty well liked. I did along
with people on both sides of the isle. When I
came back to the legislature after my son died, I
was in pretty rough shape and people could see that,
and a lot of people not only did they know me,
they knew my son because he had been with me
on campaign trail for many years. He was a pretty
well known guy. And so with that generation of legislators
out was able to build coalitions of people to get
things done.
Can you elaborate on some of the things that you
worked on.
One of the most significant things I did after my
son died was get legislation passed in twenty fourteen to
create a joint some committee to study the mental health
needs of Virginians in the twenty first century. And while
a lot of people clamored for membership, I pretty much
insisted that the membership had to be made up of legislators,
people that would have to vote on bills, because I
was just haunted by what happened after the twentousand and
seven tragedy of Virginia attack. Tim Kaine, who was governor,
appointed a Blue Ribbon commission to look into the issue.
They came up with lots of great recommendations. Those recommendations
formed a great volume of work that sits on a
shelf and gathers dust. That's a large part, I think
because there weren't a lot of legislators on that commission.
So I wanted only legislators to be part of the
commission because I want them to be invested in getting
things done, not just making recommendations that they can feel
good about. I want them to get things done. We
can help make people better.
That makes total sense. Did you see things happen?
That was in twenty fourteen. That commission worked for probably
sixty years or so, and then my sets were and
my sense still is, you know, none of us live forever.
Number one. Number two, the work or mental health reform
is going to go on forever. And so I put
it in a legislation in about twenty twenty or twenty
twenty one, turn the Joint Subcommittee into a permanent Behavioral
Health Commission made up of legislators, something that will outlive
me and will continue the work. And so we've been able.
And that's made up of Democrats and Republicans. We have
a very closely divided legislature in Virginia, with Democrats having
small majorities in both bodies.
I think that's great because both parties should be concerned
about this because it affects everyone.
This is non partisan work. Mental health issues do not
affect one party more than the other. They affect all
of us, all of our families. And I wanted to
create a forum that would allow us to make changes
going forward.
That is just really great to hear. I think that
is policy making in its finest. One of the things
that I will hear occasionally is some people will look
at other people differently because they don't feel like they
have the lived experience that they have. I don't think
you have to have the lived experience to have empathy
and want to help people. After all, we're all in
this together, in this world. I was speaking with the legislator.
They put a bill together and it passed in the
legislator and then got thrown out in the Senate. So
how do we get those people to understand that we
need changes Because some people may do some things and
people will think they're bad to the core. In reality,
the system just failed them.
We need to open our minds a little bit. Each
one of us has lived experiences their mental health issues
in every family in this country, and each one of us,
if we think about it, we've got lived experiences. If
not in our families, certainly in the families that we know,
in the community we live in. We know people that
go through awful situations.
Yes, I completely agree with you.
What I've tried to do with the Commission is not
always sit in a room Richmond and ruminate ideas about
what we can do to fix the problems. But take
them out to visit behavioral health authorities, take them out
to visit psychiatric hospitals, figure out as much as they
can about the assets and the deficiencies that we have
on our hands, so they're in the best position to
know what they need to do to fix the system
and make it more responsive to people's needs.
I think that's a great issue that you just brought up.
There's a lot of people that have no clue what
people are going through. They have to go see it,
feel it. They can't live it, but at least they
get the opportunity to see what others have to live
with on a daily basis. The one problem I see
is when these people get discharged, then they're back into
the real world.
They might not have to support they need.
So how do we get to people to see what
these people are going through yet understand that they need
more than just what they're getting at that facility.
They need help afterwards.
I don't really know that you can teach people to
have empathy. I don't know all I know, and I
don't really know that there is a great answer that's
going to work every time for that question. All I
know is that with the people that there is a
competition to be on the Behavioral Health Commission. I'm pleasantly
surprised that there are people that want to be there.
And most of the people that want to be on
the Commission are people who have known someone in their
family or some friend that have known mental health. They've
seen mental health issues firsthand. All I can do if
they don't is take them into situations where they are
likely to encounter people with mental health needs to ill people.
For example, a number of years ago, we went to
a crisis stabilization unit in one of the larger cities
in Virginia and members were able to sit and converse
with people who were se can help there and talk
to them about their problem. That probably happened nine ten
years ago, but they are legislators, former legislators that still
talk about that trip. We went to a crisis stabilization
unit for kids in the small community in Virginia a
number of years later. Again we were able to just
sit down with kids and talk about their issues. I
want my legislators, my Commission members to go into schools.
I want them to go into every setting imaginable. We're
going to visit the pediatric hospital next week. This one
of those violent hospitals next month, rather one of those
violent facilities we have I means, and we've had a
commission to recommend that it be shut down before that,
we're going to take that step. I want to make sure.
I want to go put my eyes on it. I've
been there before, but I've been there a while, and
I want other people to go there.
I think that's a really great idea.
That way people get to see in real life what's happening,
rather than just being told what's happening lots of times.
When you see it, it can be impactful. Now, you've
been in the legislature for quite some time now. Instead
of going to the negative, let's go to the positive.
In the time that you've been there, what have you seen?
It's gotten better.
Sure, this work has been ongoing for I've been in
the legislature about thirty four years so, but I've only
had this work on going for twelve or thirteen years.
The biggest change we made is basically through the budget.
From the late sixties up until the twenty teens, community
service boards, which are the local public health mental health provider,
only had to do two things. They had to provide
emergency services and they had to provide case services when
it was funded. Those were the only mandated services. Certainly
they could do war because of the funny way that
we fund these things, that created a wide disparity in
services around the state. Well, I wanted to make that
services that were necessary were available to people no matter
where they were in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I live
in Charlottesville now, but but I'm a rural you said,
you're a rural guy. I was a member of the
Dirt Road Off of Dirt Road Caucus in the state
Senate for a number of years. I lived way out
of the country, and I want to make sure that
people way out in the country as well as people
in town, have access to services. Through this program called
Step Virginia, we took that list of mandated services from
two to nine. Very expensive. We've had to invest an
awful lot of money in community services, but that was
worth it because we've raised the level of care around Virginia.
That's one thing. Another thing we've done is and this
is probably you know, this is a good thing, but
it's kind of embarrassing. The biggest thing Virginia as a
state does for housing is through the Behavioral Health Commission.
We've initiated this investment long term supportive housing. People that
have struggled with mental illness burn their bridges and they
live with anxiety anyway, and when they are time living
on how long they can stay in supportive housing, it's
not a good situation. We invest about eighty five million
dollars a year and long term supportive housing for people
with mental illness and that has raised the level of
care for those people and raised their ability to live
the best life that they can.
Yes, that's awesome. I think that's just great what you're doing. Now,
what does Virginia have for AOT laws. I think that's
a subject that's pretty important across the country.
The problem is this, we call it mot but mandatory
occupation treatment, but it's not really mandatory, and it's not
really mandatory because we just found the workforce we have.
I think Mental Health America says we're thirty eighth in
the country for workforce for mental health workforce, I will
tell you this. We have shortages in healthcare across the board,
but and psychiatric services and mental health services. The needs
are acute the shortages are acute. We have about a
thousand or eleven hundred psychiatrists in Virginia, about seventy percent
of them our retirement age. You're very close there too.
We have a crisis. We could have all the MOT
in the world, but will We don't have people to
provide the services. And if we don't have people to
provide the services, we can't function. So we've tried to
be realistic. It is AOT, not MOT, even though we
want it to be MOT. We don't have the people
to provide the care.
So I guess the big question is how do we
bridge that gap. I know some people that have taken
their loved one to a psychologist. They didn't know exactly
how to handle it, so they didn't take them on
because really they were afraid to take them on. There
are people out there that are very qualified, but yet
there's still very afraid. So how do we bridge that
gap to make it better for everyone?
The fear gap? I don't really know how to bridge that. Okay,
well it comes to workforce. You know what we've done
in Virginia and we've had some success, but we haven't
had enough. We have a loan forgiveness program. We'll forgive
the loans student loans of anybody in the behavior house
field if they go to a medically underserved area of
Virginia and state there are four years. Well, the reality
is the state, just about the whole state is medically
underserved from a psychiatric a mental health standpoint. That's one
thing we've done. The second thing we've done is create
more psychiatric residencies. We figure if we can get people
to stay here or to come here to do residency,
they might find a community they right to live in,
they might find a spouse and now just settle down.
We're trying to do anything we can. We've increased pay
significantly at our community service boards in our hospitals, and
we've had some success with some of our community service boards.
We had success with our hospitals, but this pediatric facility
I was telling you about, it's the only state facility
for kids. They're forty eight beds, but we've not been
able to staff more than half those beds for more
than three years, and winds up to be the area
that has the most violent kids. It's just really difficult.
We're kind of in a conundrum right now trying to
figure out what to do there and how to provide
for them. And I think the governor has a team
of consultants now taking a look at how we're going
to meet the needs of kids going forward.
Do you have a lot of people that reach out
to you with issues that's going on within their family
or with some loved ones, They just don't know how
to handle it.
How do you approach that?
And then how do you get them feeling hopeful for
something positive to come out of the legislature.
Well, here's the thing. Being in the legislature in Virginia.
It's a full time responsibility, but only a part time job.
Yeah, that's tough. I hear that from every legislator I
talk with.
We got lots of calls, we got lots of inquiries.
But I'm a lawyer. I'm in court probably three or
four days a week. Adams sitting in the office waiting
for people to come talk to me about things. Tracy
Appart works with me. She runs the office for me.
She has a great sense of empathy with people. And
after my son died, we became the national clearing noils
for people with mental health issues. You wouldn't believe all
the tragic stuff that came through here and continues to
come through here. And she's done a wonderful job of
holding people's hands and helping them understand how the system
can work, how they can get care. But the reality
is we're kind of overwhelmed sometimes with that. We do
the best we can.
Yeah, and I don't know how you do it. So
you say that this is a part time job.
It is a part time job, pays eighteen thousand dollars
a year.
Okay, so how many hours do you put in on
this part time job.
Well, I'm putting full time work into a part time job.
I'm a full time lawyer. You're in a full time legislator,
full time partially paid legislator. It's just that that's the
way it works.
So a lot of people don't understand that you're limited
on time.
Yet you put the time.
In even though you're really not getting compensated to do it.
Well, you know, I grew up on a farm in
the country.
I totally get that. I was raised on a farm
as well.
So my concept to time is that when you have time,
you do things. You know, you get up early in
the morning and slap the hogs. They need, and you're
counting your cows and making sure that fences were all legal.
There's work all the time. So I grew up like
that and I'm not you know, I'm not looking for
a break. I don't enjoy the politics of what I
do anymore, but I enjoy the work. The work is
meaningful to me.
Yeah, and when you can get a bill pass that
really helps people, it's got to make you feel really
accomplished and feel good.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, people are always going to think that the legislators
aren't doing anything. And that's not just in your state,
that's all across the country. How do you explain to
them so they understand that you are really trying, but
they're in a situation where they feel that you don't
get it, but you really do. How do you get
that across to them?
Well, that's an impossible thing to You can't satisfy all
the people all the time. You do the best you can.
When the legislature's in session, I do a weekly newsletter,
tell them what I've been up to. I get lots
of compliments about that. It's usually pretty long, just explain
what we've been up to during the year. I do
it periodically throughout the year when substantial things happen. Some
people are always going to be concerned that I'm not
doing enough for them. That's just the way of the world.
All I can do is do what I can, and
that's what I'm going to keep on doing.
So do you have any bills coming up or are
you working on a legislation that might help the people
that we've been talking about.
We're working on things all the time. The legislature won't
go back into session until January, so we have a
lot of time to good ideas honed the best we can.
Our primary focus right now is workforce. We've got to
make sure we can develop the workforce. We've got to
have the pipeline. I've talked to people at some of
our institutions fire learning figure out how best we can
keep people get people into these fields of work, and
how best we could keep them. A lot of it
has to do with money, so a lot of it's
budget heary. This past session, We've made a huge amount
of progress over the years in terms of our expenditures
for mental health services. This past year we had the
largest one time mid budget crisis in Medicaid funding. We
had to come up with six hundred and thirty million
dollars just to make Medicaid whole. We have a two
year budget cycle, and so we were again into the
second year and we've never had a situation like that before,
but that kind of cramped our ability to make much
progress this past year from a financial standpoint, But we're
still working.
I can only imagine now. With that said, how do
you deal with it? A lot of these things can
be very, very overwhelming. You have so many people coming
to you, You have so many people that tell you
how much help they need. How do you handle it
so that you know that you're doing this, You're making
as much progress as you possibly can, so you can
get up in the morning feeling good about what you're
trying to do.
Well. You don't feel good every day, you know that
keeps you up at night. Sometimes I don't sleep good
at some nights. All I can do is what I
can do. You know, I'm just one person. I do
the best I can. I've got good help, and I've
got to get the people that are helping me with
this Behavioral Health Commission. We have a full time staff
tracys interns in this office in the summers. I have
several people that help me. I feel good about what
we can accomplish. I know that there's more to be done.
That's why I keep going.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Now, what about the other
people that you tell with the other senators and legislators,
how do you find their response in what you're trying
to do on creating these bills that will help the
people that we've been talking about.
Well, sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad. But usually
I can find one or two people that will work
with me on the same goals to get things to accomplished.
Through the Behavioral Health Commission, we can steer things generally
toward fixing some of our mental health needs, and we
can develop consensus around some of those ideas. I've got
other legislators on that commission, as I said, both Democrats
and Republicans, members of the Senate, members of the House,
and we all work in the same direction. We might
have different ideas at the end of the day about
how some things ought to be done, but I found
good partners to work with.
What about the governor? Do you reach out to him
at all? Do you work together trying to craft things together?
How does that relationship.
Work well in the legislative process. I try to get
things done, and the governor has his own ideas and
may go in a different direction. This governor has had
a focus on mental health. His focus has been a
little different than mine. I'm focused more on keeping people
out of crisis. He's more focused more on crisis response.
But in general, we've had some things to work going together.
There are people in the administration that are good people
that are focused on finding ways to get things done
to make life better for people with mental illness, and
I've been able to work with them.
Now you've given a lot of information on a lot
of things that you've focused on.
What about the legal side.
As you know, autistic people and those with serious mental
illness can lots of times do things that they normally
wouldn't do or is misunderstood by the police, and then
all of a sudden it's legal.
That's a huge issue. The intersection of mental health and
criminal justice is awful. We've had bills, the governor veto bill.
We've tried to decriminalize or defelamize some actions by people
with autism who are assaulting police officers. Because often a
family is a witsand they don't know what to do.
They call the police. The person who's having a fit
or an attack, they lash out and they're not sure
what's going on, and the person who they've called for
for help ends up being charged with the crime. It's
a terrible situation. What we've worked on is trying to
find ways to decriminalize mental health, working to fund more
crisis intervention training for police officers so police officers are
better equipped to respond to people in mental illness. We've
got this program called the Marcus of Burke, named after
a young man and Richmond who was having a mental
health crisis and was killed by a police officer a
number of years ago, to try to make sure that
the response to mental health crisis in simply law enforcement,
but also puts some mental health expertise on the ground.
On that end, we've tried also to make sure that
we have better treatment and services available to people that
are in our jails, and we've tried to make sure
that we are we do a better job of planning
for discharge for people that are leaving the system. So
we've worked at around the edges on various ways, but
there's still.
A problems oh yeah.
Earlier this spring, I did sixty one straight episodes. It
was for Autism Awareness Month and Mental Health Awareness Month,
and we focused on the legal system. I had judges, lawyers,
CIIT trainers, psychologists, forensic psychologists. Everyone agreed that the system
is fractured. This special event I'm doing is crafting justice.
I'm speaking with people such as yourself, as well as
advocates and those that work with legislators in creating new
legislation that ultimately helps those that need help the most.
I'm trying to include everyone that's involved in trying to
make good change for those that needed so. In closing,
what would you like to tell the listeners that you
think that they need to know about everything that you
you're trying to do with the people that you work with.
My sense is that people ought to have the opportunity
to live the best life they can. They might have
differing nobilities. We all have different abilities, and certainly you
can't help the way you are. You can't help the
conditions you have. There are lots of things that are
out of your control. But we as a commonwealth have
an obligation to try to to give people the tools
they need to succeed to live the best life they can.
And I'm trying the best I can to tear down
the walls of stigma. It's around mental health and get
people the treatment they need to keep people out of crisis.
It's as simple as that, to keep people out of crisis,
to let them live the best life they can. I
want to make this job so that it's not the
job will always be here, but I don't think it
ought to be on the front page. I think we
need to normalize mental health care. Mental health care is
health care. There's mental health need in every family. We
have to normalize that, and we need to get about
the business of getting people well. And I'm excited about
the future. I know we've got a lot of hard
work out of us, but that's okay.
I cannot agree with you more. Well, this has been great,
great conversation, great information. I really appreciate you taking the
time to join us today.
Sure, thanks for having me.
It's been my pleasure. Thanks again, thanks for taking time
out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today.
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