As area nonprofits face uncertainty around both federal funding and sudden policy shifts directly impacting their work, RMHF continues to highlight the people who have not only benefited from the critical services our local nonprofits provide, but the individuals and families who may no longer have access to these services because resources are no longer available.
For our most recent entry, we are focusing on our friends at Health Brigade, a longtime RMHF partner and Virginia’s oldest free clinic. Health Brigade has provided exceptional health services to those least served in a caring and non-judgmental environment since 1970.
In May, the federal government suddenly revoked $850,000 in critical facility upgrade funds and Virginia Department of Health reduced nearly $1 million in programmatic funds from Health Brigade. According to their social media post, the immediate halt to funding jeopardized the thousands of people who have come to rely on Health Brigade for medical care, mental health support, harm reduction, gender-affirming services, and more.
As they wrote at the time: “This isn’t just a budget issue. It’s an attack on public health, compassion, and our most vulnerable neighbors.”
As this continues to play out at the local, state, and federal levels, RMHF wanted to speak to one of these neighbors who found hope and healing as a Health Brigade patient. A patient like Brian*.
Brian is a Richmond native who had moved across the country before returning during the early days of the COVID pandemic to take care of his mother.
But once he moved back with his wife, he discovered his mother was doing worse than he’d anticipated. They lacked internet access, cell phone access, and residing in a rural area, Brian began to feel isolated.
“Things started not fitting in their normal places for my wife and I,” Brian remembers. “It wasn’t one thing. It was many things.”
As time went by, the stressors continued to pile up. Eventually, his wife chose to return to her family in Mississippi. Brian had given up psychiatrist visits and his usual medication to pay for his mom’s care. At the same time, Brian was growing increasingly anxious about how rapidly he was burning through savings in order to provide his mother with services he knew she needed.
“It only took three or four months, but I realized I was losing control over what’s happening in my life,” Brian said. “There was no massive, one-off event. These are things that are just going wrong. You start questioning yourself, and other people. It becomes hard to pick yourself back up, and you kind of just want to curl up in a ball somewhere. It’s a paralyzing place to be.”
Once Brian made the decision to take care of his mental health and started calling around to private providers, he soon realized that none of them would be able to see him soon. Additionally, Brian no longer had the economic safeguards he’d always been able to rely on.
“I always either had insurance or had income that I could pay out of pocket,” Brian remembers. “That’s been my whole life.”
Then he remembered Health Brigade.
“Over half my family went to VCU and we all know about Health Brigade, which was then the Fan Free Clinic,” he said. “That’s how I remembered. Even as a kid, I knew they were this organization in the Fan doing righteous work.”
With these memories in mind and renewed hope that he might finally get the mental health care he needed, Brian called Health Brigade.
To his surprise, he was able to start the thorough intake process quickly. Soon after, when he walked in for his first appointment and interacted with the staff, he was floored.
“They’re all about rigorous compassion. They are genuinely empathetic,” Brian said. “I never had that! I’d never been to a doctor’s office where that was the case.”
After discussing his specific situation with the mental health professionals at Health Brigade, Brian was able to get the medication he needed and was provided with ongoing medication management as well.
But that wasn’t the end of Brian’s healthcare journey.
During his appointment, it was discovered that Brian also had high blood pressure. While he knew he’d had it for some time, he never really took it seriously until that moment.
“It struck me how casual I was about it and how diligent they were about it,” Brian said. “After it was treated, I was pretty sure they’d just added 10 years to my life.”
Today, Brian is still a patient at Health Brigade, receiving care both for his mental health needs and to monitor his blood pressure. He knows the name of every person he’s ever interacted with as a patient, he feels at home, and he knows he’s getting the care he needs.
But Brian is concerned about the recent funding cuts and how it will impact patients and the larger Richmond community.
“I needed general maintenance,” he said, “but what about people who need something massive? Someone who needs massive interventions? Now that they’re getting all this funding cut, those problems don’t go away, they just come flooding back. That’s why I truly believe that Health Brigade is a community bulwark.”
Ultimately, Brian best summed up his experience with a simple phrase from early on in this conversation:
“I don’t know what I would have done without Health Brigade.”
*The patient’s name has been changed in the interest of privacy