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Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ?
Senator Creigh Deeds: How A Virginia Senator Turns Grief Into Behavioral Health Law
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- [00:07]
A
Welcome to why Not Me Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide, hosted by Tony Mantour, broadcasting from the heart of Music City, usa, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests share their raw, powerful stories. Some will spark laughter, others will move you to tears. These real life journeys inspire, connect, and remind you that you're never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower everyone to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness, unwavering acceptance, and profound understanding of autism and mental health. Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantour. Welcome to why Not Crafting Justice, Empowering Autism and mental health through legislation. Joining us today is Virginia State Senator Cree Deeds, a dedicated public servant with over three decades of impactful leadership. Representing Virginia's 11th 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. 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.
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B
Sure, go ahead. Thanks for having me.
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A
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 be doing what you are doing today?
- [02:02]
B
Well, my name is Cree Dietz. I've been in the State Senate since 2001. I was in the House of Delegates before that. First elected by legislature in 91. 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. Found ways to promote economic growth, finding ways to support school divisions. I've represented a rural district. I still do largely. So economic development is hard in rural areas. Schools are sometimes lagging. You've got to make sure our kids can compete. So that's been my focus. Bunch of years ago, my son was diagnosed with mental illness. 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 in that brain, in that area for a long time. You know, we had, in 2007, we had the tragedy of Virginia Tech. That was preventable, but a lot of these tragedies are. The kid there was known by many different mental health entities to have problems, but they didn't talk to one another. And he committed a terrible, terrible tragedy. So we were involved after that, but certainly after My son died. I got more involved.
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A
Can you give us a little more insight and information about your son?
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B
My son was 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 valedictorian of his class in high school and went to William Larry. He was on dean's list down there. He took a year off after his first couple 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 he ended up getting a diagnosis. So he would have been about 21, I guess, when he first was diagnosed, and he died when he was 24.
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A
I'm so sorry to hear about that. With how you just described him, you have had more lived experience than most senators or legislators will have. So how do you use this to get across to other senators and legislators, 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.
- [04:20]
B
You know, I've been in the legislature a long time. Everybody knows me. And while I'm. I'm probably not the most social person in the world or the most friendly all the time, I'm pretty well liked. I get along with people on both sides of the aisle. 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, you know, was able to build coalitions of people to get things done.
- [04:56]
A
Can you elaborate on some of the things that you worked on?
- [04:59]
B
One of the most significant things I did after my son died was get legislation passed in 2014 to create a joint subcommittee to study the mental health needs of Virginians in the 21st century. And while a lot of people clamored for membership, I pretty much insisted that the membership had to be made up of legislators of people that would have to vote on bills. Because I was just haunted by what happened after the 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech. Tim Kaine, who was governor, appointed a blue ribbon commission to look into the issue. They came out with lots of great recommendations. Those recommendations form a great volume of work that sits on a shelf and gathers dust. That's in 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.
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A
That makes total sense. Did you see things happen?
- [05:54]
B
That was in 2014. That commission worked for probably six years or so. And then my sense was. And my sense still is, you know, none of us live forever, number one. Number two, the work of mental health reform is going to go on forever. And so I put it in legislation in about 2020 or 2021, 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.
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A
I think that's great, because both parties should be concerned about this because it affects everyone.
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B
This is nonpartisan 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.
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A
That is just really great to hear. I think that is policymaking 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 a legislator. They put a bill together and it passed in the legislature 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.
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B
We need to open our minds a little bit. Each one of us has lived experiences. There are 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 family, certainly in the families that we know, in the community we live in, we know people that go through awful situations.
- [07:56]
A
Yes, I completely agree with you.
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B
What I've tried to do with the commission is not only sit in a room in 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.
- [08:27]
A
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 the support they need. So how do we get the 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.
- [09:11]
B
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's a great answer that's going to work every time for that question. All I know is that with the people that there is 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, some 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 seeking help there and talk to them about their problem. That probably happened nine, 10 years ago. But there 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. 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 a pediatric hospital next week. That's one of the most violent hospitals next month, rather one of those violent facilities we have. I mean, it's. And we've had a commission 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 in a while and I want other people to go there.
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A
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 that's gotten better?
- [11:08]
B
Sure. This work has been ongoing for. I've been in the legislature about 34 years total, but I've only had this work ongoing for 12 or 13 years. The biggest change we made is basically through the budget. From the late 60s up until the 2000, 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 more because of the funny way that we fund these things. That created a broad 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. 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've lived way out in 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 2 to 9. Very expensive. We' 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 in long term support of housing. People that have struggle with mental illness burn their bridges and they live with anxiety anyway. And when they are time limited on how long they can stay in supportive housing, it's not a good situation. We invest about $85 million a year in 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.
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A
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.
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B
The problem is this. We call it mot, but it's mandatory outpatient treatment. But it's not really mandatory. And it's not really mandatory because we just want the workforce we have. I think Mental health America says we're 38th in the country for workforce, for mental health workforce. I will tell you this. We have shortages in healthcare across the board, but in 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 70% of them are retirement age. Are very close there, too. We have a crisis. We could have all the MOT in the world, but 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.
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A
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 they're still very afraid. So how do we bridge that gap to make it better for everyone?
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B
The fear gap, I don't really know how to bridge that.
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A
Okay.
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B
When 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 behavioral health field if they go to a medically underserved area of Virginia and stay there for 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 their residency, they might find the community they like to live in, they might find a spouse and they'll just settle down. We're trying to do anything we can. We've increased pay significantly at our community service boards and 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. There are 48 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 where 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.
- [15:45]
A
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?
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B
Well, here's the thing. Being in the legislature in Virginia is a full time responsibility, but only a part time job.
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A
Yeah, that's tough. I hear that from every legislator I talk with.
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B
We get lots of calls, we get lots of inquiries. But I'm a lawyer. I'm in court probably three or four days a week. I don't sit in the office waiting for people to come talk to me about things. Tracy Epperd 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 clearinghouse 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.
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A
And I don't know how you do it. So you say that this is a part time job.
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B
It is a part time job, pays $18,000 a year.
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A
Okay. So how many hours do you put in on this part time job?
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B
Well, I'm putting full time work into a part time job. I'm a full time lawyer and a full time legislator. Full time, partially paid legislator. It's just that that's the way it works.
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A
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.
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B
Well, you know, I grew up on a farm in the country.
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A
I totally get that. I was raised on a farm as well.
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B
So I. My concept of time is that when you have time, you do things. You know, you get up early in the morning and slap the hogs late in the evening. You're counting your cows and making sure that fences are 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.
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A
Yeah. And when you can get a bill passed that really helps people, it's got to make you feel really accomplished and feel good.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Unfortunately, people are always going to think that 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?
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B
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 telling them what I've been up to. I get lots of compliments about that. It's usually pretty long, just explaining 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.
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A
So do you have any bills coming up or are you working on any legislation that might help the people that we've been talking about?
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B
We're working on things all the time. The legislature won't go back into sessions until January, so we have a lot of time to get 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 can keep them. A lot of it has to do with money, so a lot of it's budgetary. 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 $630 million just to make Medicaid whole. We have a two year budget cycle and so we were in the beginning of the second year. And we've never, 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.
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A
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?
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B
Well, you don't, you don't feel good every day. You know, it keeps you up at night. Sometimes I don't sleep good 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. Traci has 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.
- [20:56]
A
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Now, what about the other people that you talk 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?
- [21:11]
B
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 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.
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A
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?
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B
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. 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, we've had some things to work on 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.
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A
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.
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B
That's a huge issue. The intersection of mental health and criminal justice is awful. We've had bills, the governor vetoed a bill. We've tried to decriminalize or de felonize some actions by people with autism who are assaulting police officers because often a family, as it wits in, they don't know what to do. They call the police. The person who's in, 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. Who they've called for for help ends up being charged with a 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 Alert, named after a in 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 isn't 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 it around the ED various ways. But there's still a problem.
- [24:08]
A
Oh yeah. Earlier this spring, I did 61 straight episodes. It was for Autism Awareness Month and Mental Health Awareness Month. And we focused on the legal system. I had judges, lawyers, CIT 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 need it. So in closing, what would you like to tell the listeners that you think that they need to know about everything that you're trying to do with the people that you work with?
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B
My sense is that people ought to have the opportunity to live the best life they can. They might have differing abilities. We all have differing 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 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 that surround mental health, 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 ahead of us, but that's okay. Okay.
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A
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.
- [26:10]
B
Sure. Thanks for having me.
- [26:11]
A
It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone who has a story to share, tell them to contact us at WhyNotMe World. One last thing, spread the word about why not me. Our conversations are inspiring guests that show you are not alone in this world.