ROANOKE, Va. – Bradley Free Clinic is expanding after a huge increased need for free health care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A lot of the folks we see here don’t have sometimes access to food, housing, medicines or any other type of support,” said Dr. Tom Milam, who serves on the behavioral board for Bradley Free Clinic.
The biggest increase in need when the coronavirus hit was in mental health services.
“Before people were coming in for basic anxiety and things but now there’s a lot of severe anxiety, substance use, suicidal behavior,” Milam said.
The clinic went from treating about 45 behavioral health patients in 2019 to nearly 400 in 2020.
“That’s a huge, huge increase. We never expected that to happen,” said Janine Underwood, executive director of the Bradley Free Clinic.
Telehealth allowed them to meet that need during the pandemic but also presented a clear challenge for the future.
“We didn’t know where we would put all the patients when we needed to bring them back into the building,” Underwood said.
But now, there’s a solution as the clinic prepares to build a new addition dedicated entirely to mental health.
“This completes us,” Underwood said.
The nearly 2,000 square foot space featuring more counseling and group therapy rooms came with a high price tag, especially for a non-profit, but the clinic was able to rally community support and grants to raise $650,000.
“It will directly affect our ability to get patients in the door or through telehealth to get the care they need. The numbers that we’ve seen have more than quadrupled since last year and this will even add to that,” Milam said.
They hope to break ground on the addition in June, wrap up construction by the end of the year and welcome the first patients early next year.