Psychology professor develops training on substance abuse, mental illness recovery for Virginia courts

Liberty University Professor of Psychology Dr. Brian Kelley is helping inform practices in Virginia’s judicial system for addressing substance use disorder and mental illness through new specialized training.

The project, which has been underway for about six months, involves creating curriculum for the specialty dockets across the state, including the recovery court, family court, veterans court, and mental health court. In the process, Kelley has met with multiple judges, recovery court staff, and more to advise on the content and how to make it maximally effective. This occurred after collaborating with Horizon Behavioral Health on several federal grants supporting Recovery Courts and also serving as an external evaluator for such programs.

“The judges and their teams that run these programs are trying to manage and support people in their recovery in the context of court,” Kelley said. “These are very smart and very accomplished judges and attorneys, but they’re not mental health and substance use experts, so the goal was to put together some material, curriculum, and live training to not only give them the content knowledge but also bring their whole team onboard so that they can all be literally and figuratively on the same page.”

He also wrote a roughly 200-page bench book as a central resource for a shared understanding of the issues, challenges, and best practices for recovery. He also created a searchable repository of evidence-based practices, which Kelley called “a one-stop shop for everybody in the court systems if they have questions that are related to recovery and treatment instead of the law.”  This project was supported by a team of experts, including several Liberty University faculty and students.

He said the issues of substance abuse and mental illness are only becoming more prevalent as time goes on, and it is important that the courts and professionals are remaining informed and equipped to address these complex problems.

“Substance use disorder is typically associated with a lot of shame and stigma, so people don’t talk about it a lot, and I understand that. But at the same time, this issue is not going away; it’s arguably getting worse as we legalize things like marijuana,” Kelley said. “Having more people with backgrounds in addressing substance use disorder and mental illness can only be a positive thing.”

Throughout the effort, Kelley has enlisted the aid of multiple Liberty students, including Anessa Wells, who finishes her M.A. in Marriage and Family Counseling in May, as his principal research assistant and other students as editors. He has also consulted with six subject matter experts, two of whom are Liberty faculty: Department of Counselor Education & Family Studies director of doctoral research Dr. Fred Volk and Department of Community Care & Counseling professor Dr. Fred Milacci.

“I was really grateful that I was able to not only run this project but bring together a really great team of folks, many of them affiliated with Liberty,” Kelley said. “It’s a great opportunity for a student to basically review material for the Virginia Supreme Court and make sure it’s all correct, and they also get to learn a lot as they review that material.”

The training and bench book will be made available to the courts this summer. The next phase will consist of Kelley teaching others how to lead future trainings.

Kelley has spent decades in the field of substance abuse psychology, and his training is concentrated in neuroscience and pharmacology/toxicology as well as clinical/community research.

In 2022, Kelley became an evaluator for a $2 million four-year grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) to Horizon Behavioral Health under the Department of Justice that is helping more members of the local community recover from substance use disorders through expanding the services of Lynchburg’s Adult Drug Court (ADC). Horizon focuses its efforts on developing and implementing evidence-based services that help increase years of life and reduce disparities in health outcomes among adults with serious mental illness and substance use.

As a professor engaged in current research and work in the field who also prioritizes professional development for his students, Kelley said the project is an opportunity for real-world application.

“Something that is important to me as a professor is that I’m teaching students things that are current and things that our world needs,” he said. “For them to see that I’m actively working on a project, that they would be able to participate in that project on some level, and that it’s a project doing positive things in our own community, I think that’s really important. I’m teaching material that I reviewed myself. The students are staying very current with what is important for the topics of substance abuse and mental health and public policy from these types of activities.”