Bridge Counseling Associates, formed in 1971, is the oldest nonprofit providing individual and family counseling in Southern Nevada. But when David Robeck took over as its president in 2014, the organization’s future was in jeopardy.
“It was about to fail; it had just terminated the entire leadership and no other agency wanted to merge with us because we were in such bad shape,” Robeck says. “It was important for me to go out there and make sure that we had a better reputation.”
Robeck proceeded to bring Bridge Counseling back from the brink by moving into a 46,000-square-foot facility on McLeod Drive in 2019 while nearly doubling its total staff to about 80. Between that building and a smaller outpatient center on Alta Drive, it has served more than 20,000 clients since he took the reins. Robeck plans to continue building its infrastructure and staff until the organization reaches capacity.
His efforts are one of many adjacent pieces of Nevada’s push to expand its underwhelming mental health care landscape. According to Mental Health America’s 2024 report, Nevada ranks last among all states on a composite score that factors in a variety of metrics like the prevalence of substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, insurance coverage gaps and the state of its mental health workforce.
There’s been strong bipartisan recognition of the need to fortify the state’s mental health resources, with the most prominent recent example being Gov. Joe Lombardo’s May 15 introduction of Senate Bill 495, or the Nevada Health Care Access Act, in the Nevada Legislature. The lengthy proposal calls for a $25 million annual fund to combat workforce shortages, with an emphasis on bolstering its graduate residency programs. It would also create a new Office of Mental Health under the Nevada Health Authority, which would be tasked with streamlining access to health care offerings like Medicaid.
Bridge Counseling’s dining room.
The provider gap is a longstanding concern. According to the latest data from County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, a University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute program that tracks health trends across the United States, Nevada had one mental health care provider for every 376 residents in 2024, while Clark County’s rate was 391-to-1.
Nevada lawmakers are looking to address this shortage through Assembly Bill 163, which would enter Nevada into an agreement with 37 other states that allows licensed professional counselors in any of those states to practice in other member states. The bill drew support from more than 100 mental health providers in Nevada in early hearings.
“It’s hard to keep clinicians. This is difficult work that we do. These are people who are facing life-changing problems that we’re able to help them with,” Robeck says. “For us, it helps that we pay salaries weekly, give wonderful benefits and that nobody here is a contractor. And if a client doesn’t show up, you’re going to get paid regardless.”
All employees are certified in skills like CPR and crisis prevention protocol, and have an opportunity to offset up to $75,000 in student loans through a Health Resources Services Administration program. These considerations help Robeck retain the skilled workers he already has, but he’s also made a point to designate specialized rooms where practicum students from UNLV and other universities can learn alongside a licensed counselor.
As it stands, Bridge Counseling’s McLeod facility offers a strong mix of ancillary services, and Robeck—a former banker—left no stone unturned as he transformed it from its former use as a Silver State Schools Credit Union branch. Every space has a purpose, from the Child and Youth Community Treatment Center opened in 2021 to a revamped kitchen space that’s expected to soon serve as a culinary workforce training site.
He credits this sustained surge in resources largely to his nonprofit’s 2017 federal status as a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic, which he says “gave us a brand new license with Medicaid so that we could do all the mental health and substance abuse treatments in the same location.”
“We see all the time people who are treated only for substance abuse, but those who actually work to identify their underlying mental health issue—what caused them to become an addict—can be sober and clean for the rest of their life because they’ve fixed both issues, not just the symptoms,” Robeck says.
David Robeck, president and CEO of Bridge Counseling, gives a tour of the facility on May 12.
Most of their clients come via referrals from courts or the Department of Family Services, with a large portion of those cases stemming from substance use disorders. Bridge Counseling’s growing residential treatment component, which launched about three years ago and welcomed the addition of 25 short-term psychiatric beds last December, emphasizes a mix of individualized counseling and group therapy sessions.
“These are people who may be homeless and need a place to stay and be stabilized. They’re usually here anywhere from nine days to a full month, and the next step would be going to another agency where they can get more permanent housing,” Robeck says. “Beyond that, if a client is not prepared to go yet—perhaps we’ve dealt with their drug issue and we haven’t finished their mental health issue—they will stay here as long as they need to.”
During their treatment period, patients typically have a one-on-one therapy session and two group meetings per week. They work closely with a targeted case manager who checks in on them regularly and can help them craft résumés and apply for jobs. Because most clients rely on Medicaid, Robeck says Bridge also offers an in-house professional who can facilitate their coverage.
As an adoptive single father of four sons with “special needs,” Robeck is also concerned over an even larger shortage of youth mental health care in the state. On May 9, Nevada’s U.S. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen and 19 of their peers penned a letter to U.S. Department of Education secretary Linda McMahon demanding answers after the department reportedly cut more than $1 billion in Bipartisan Safer Communities Act federal mental health grants to help schools hire mental health staff.
Those cuts would further hinder an already shorthanded youth mental health care system in Nevada. To do his part to crack down on the issue, Robeck has been preparing to turn a garage in the McLeod facility’s parking lot into a 5,200-square-foot pediatric ward with 16 inpatient psychiatric beds, recreation rooms and an exterior courtyard.
An adjacent plan would add another 28,000-square-foot, two-story multi-family transitional housing building with 52 units and 100 beds. Both proposals recently earned Clark County land use approval, but Robeck’s team is still trying to shore up the $8 million required to make it happen.
While he’d like to see increased funding opportunities for projects like these in the future, Robeck adds that he has noticed Nevada representatives place a “larger focus on mental health” since he began his nonprofit career.
“This is how we get rid of stigma, by recognizing it,” he says. “This is not One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; this is about helping people rebuild their lives.”
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