BLACKSBURG, Va. – Virginia Tech is taking aim at the mental health professional shortage in Southwest Virginia with a new $1.4 million federal grant that will help train the next generation of counselors.
The grant, awarded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), focuses on increasing accessibility to mental health services in underserved areas.
“This is a grant from HRSA, which is the Health Resources Services Administration, part of the federal government. And their whole effort is to increase accessibility for health services,” says Gerard Lawson, professor in Virginia Tech’s counselor education program. “It’s important to recognize that mental health is health care.”
The need is particularly acute in Southwest Virginia. On HRSA’s scale measuring mental health professional shortages from 0 to 25 – with 25 being the most severe – some counties in the region score as high as 22 or 23.
“In other research projects, we’ve found some of those folks wait six, eight months to be able to see a counselor and often have to drive hours, literally two hours, to go see somebody that’s covered by their insurance,” Lawson explains.
The four-year grant provides $25,000 fellowships to seven graduate students who commit to working in underserved areas. The funding covers tuition, fees, books, and related expenses.
Abbey Lynch, one of the fellowship recipients, works in both Pulaski County and Roanoke schools. She’s witnessed firsthand the post-pandemic challenges facing youth mental health.
“We’re in a very interesting time especially post-pandemic with a lot of these kiddos having missed some key developmental milestones and socialization,” Lynch says. “The top issues right now I’m seeing definitely anxiety overarchingly... bullying is a huge issue especially with social media.”
Lynch, a second-year master’s student in the counselor education program, sees school-based counseling as a crucial access point for mental health services.
“So many of the students I’ve worked with do not have access to mental resources outside of school,” she says. “They may have access to community resources and just not realize that, but the beauty of what I do for work as a school counselor is I have access to all students.”
Early intervention is key, according to Lawson. “The research on prevention shows us over and over again for every dollar we spend on prevention, we are saving between eight and $12 of investment later on down the line for things like more intensive mental health services, sometimes hospitalizations or even involvement in the court system.”
The program aligns with Virginia Tech’s land grant mission. “We don’t just focus on doing research and putting it out in journals and books,” Lawson says. “We really want to be sure that the work that we’re doing ends up in our community, because that’s what we serve.”
The initiative is already showing results. Virginia Tech counseling students provided more than 5,400 hours of free mental health services to the community during the past academic year.
For Lynch, the impact is both professional and personal. “It just genuinely brings me so much joy,” she says. “This work has a lot of meaning and has a lot of value.”