Counselors from Lydia Place, a nonprofit organization in Bellingham, will be making house calls for people with mental health issues.
BELLINGHAM, Wash. — A new mobile mental health clinic is opening its doors.
Operated by the Bellingham nonprofit Lydia Place, the van is a spot focused on comfort, quiet, and confidentiality.
The rolling clinic will visit clients throughout Whatcom County in person and provide mental health and drug counseling to those in need. Most of the customers are people trying to escape homelessness.
“This has been a dream come true for us for a while,” said Holly Martinsen, clinic supervisor.
Many of those people have little or no access to transportation. Seeing a counselor is difficult at best.
“Trying to meet basic needs on a daily basis creates a lot of stress,” Martinsen said.
Martinsen said moving out of homelessness can be a full-time job.
Stress affects the whole family.
“If you have multiple commitments a day to meet housing and basic needs, it’s difficult to stay on top of all of those commitments and keep tabs on your children,” Martinsen said. “It has a huge impact on the mental health of individuals and the mental health of their families, including children.”
“Our goal is to ensure that the children who receive our services along with their families are never homeless again,” said Dejah Lynn Griffin of Lydia Place. “So this is about supporting them to have some kind of stability and creating opportunities for them to grow.”
Mobile clinics are the latest strategy being rolled out in Whatcom County to end the cycle of addiction, poverty and homelessness. Among them: a new downtown substation for the Bellingham Police Department, a “treatment court” designed to get people into drug treatment rather than jail, the Bellingham mayor’s executive order that strengthened drug law enforcement, and a new This includes a 300-bed shelter planned for . Scheduled to open this fall.
Lydia Place employees do not believe there is anything quite similar to their program in the United States.
They hope the van will help Bellingham, and the entire county, turn the corner.
“Being able to offer this space to our clients as a safe, comfortable and inviting space will be a game-changer for us and for them,” Martinsen said.
Lydia Place employees hope other organizations will follow suit and open more mobile clinics across the country.
