DBSA-Northern Virginia executive director offers an alternative to mental health legislation pending in the Commonwealth

Jayson Blair, the executive director of DBSA-Northern Virginia, offers support -- through groups and other means -- as the ultimate answer to addressing the mental health crisis in Virginia at a time when the General Assembly is attempting to pass legislation to address two violent events involving mentally ill people from Centreville. Blair does so in an op-ed in Times Community Newspapers, which publish more than a dozen local newspapers in Fairfax and Loudoun counties.

"It is clear that Commonwealth of Virginia's legislature will act soon to reform the state's mental health laws, most probably attempting to make it easier to involuntarily commit those with mental illnesses," he writes. "One thing that is also clear is that we are not headed back to the days of institutionalization, where thousands of people, many of whom did not belong, were warehoused in state hospitals often for years. No matter what changes are made to the laws that would have made it easier to hospitalized the Chos and Kennedys of the world, there will be a point where they will make a reentry into the community and there has to be something for them ..."