Mental Health Services Expanding To Fentress, Pickett Through Center

Ridgeview Behavioral Health Services will open a community mental health outpatient clinic in Jamestown.

The new location aims to provide easier access to behavioral health services to citizens located in Fentress and Pickett counties. Development Director Michael Yates said such services are important in rural communities where such services are absent. Yates said services include basic mental health and substance abuse assessment, and outpatient therapy via in-person and telehealth.

“It means the world to us, in part, it’s part of our fulfillment as an agency,” Yates said. “We believe that people are priority and we provide a warm, welcoming place where complex mental health and substance use conditions can be met with hope, healing, and recovery.”

Yates said the clinic will also provide medication management, an outpatient substance use treatment program, and care coordination. The center’s ribbon cutting takes place Wednesday at 10am.

Yates said the location will also provide criminal justice and re-entry services by working closely with the Fentress Justice Center.

“As many people in Pickett County know, that is where inmates from Pickett, they are housed at the Fentress Justice Center,” Yates said. “So you can tell there’s a broad range of services that we provide out of that location.”

Yates said that Jamestown’s opening is to both fill a need for behavioral health services as well as provide more general rural outreach.

“Part of the funding comes from Herses Rural Communities Opioid Response Programming, so certainly trying to make that we’re meeting the substance use treatment needs,” Yates said.

Yates said over 250 people have already sought out mental health assessments before the location’s official opening. Yates said this speaks to the underlying need for mental health services in Pickett and Fentress.