Norfolk Mental Health Hotlines
If you’re looking for mental health help in Norfolk, you don’t have to work out which agency covers what before you make a call. The Mental Health Hotline can talk through what you’re dealing with and point you toward the kind of support that fits. Call 866-903-3787 any hour of the day or night.
If this is an emergency
If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911.
If you are in emotional distress or thinking about suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7.
In Norfolk, the Community Services Board answers a 24-hour emergency line at 757-664-7690.
The Mental Health Hotline is an information and referral service. It is not a substitute for emergency services.
If you’re looking for mental health help in Norfolk, the reason could be almost anything: depression that has flattened everything out, anxiety that won’t switch off, drinking or using more than you meant to, a diagnosis you’re still learning to live with, or a stretch that has simply gotten heavier than you can carry on your own. None of that needs to reach an emergency before it counts as a reason to ask for help.
Norfolk doesn’t have its own round-the-clock walk-in center for adults, but people here can use the one just over the line in Chesapeake. Chesapeake Cares Crisis Center at Heron’s Cove, on Great Bridge Boulevard, takes anyone 18 or older from across the region, Norfolk included, every hour of every day, and it exists so a bad night doesn’t have to mean an emergency room. If getting there is the problem, calling 988 from a 757 number reaches the regional call center, which can send a mobile team to you anywhere in the city. For kids and teens, Norfolk has something most cities don’t: Children’s Pavilion, a 60-bed mental health hospital for young people that CHKD opened in 2022 on its main campus.
Cost is the other wall people hit. About one in nine working-age adults in Norfolk has no health insurance, so it matters that the public door here is a real one. The Norfolk Community Services Board sees adults for walk-in intake assessments Monday through Thursday mornings at 7447 Central Business Park Drive, and if its programs aren’t the right fit, its care coordinators help with referrals to low-cost options elsewhere. The board also runs a peer support line at 757-664-6683, answered daily by people with lived experience, and NAMI Coastal Virginia’s groups cost nothing. More on mental health insurance coverage is available if that’s the sticking point.
You don’t need to know which of these is right for you before you reach out. The figures further down describe Norfolk in aggregate, not you. Whether you’re looking for yourself or for someone you care about, the Mental Health Hotline can help you sort through the options at 866-903-3787. More Virginia mental health resources are collected on the state page.
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Where to Get Help in Norfolk
These are the numbers and addresses worth having. Some are for the worst night of your life and some are for a Tuesday afternoon when you just can’t face the week, and both of those are reasons to call. If you’re not sure what happens when you dial, here’s what 988 actually does.
Mental Health in Norfolk, by the Numbers
Three figures that say something about the conditions people here are dealing with. They set context for the resources above rather than explaining any one person’s situation.
Figures come from the CDC PLACES 2025 release, which models city-level estimates from 2023 BRFSS survey responses for adults 18 and over; poor mental health days are counted over the past 30 days. Norfolk sits 18th of the 100 cities in this series for frequent mental distress and 13th for loneliness, where 1 is the highest rate, and 54th for depression. About 10.9 percent of working-age adults here have no health insurance. Model-based estimates describe a population, not any one person in it.
Working out where to start is often the hardest part, especially when you’re already worn down and the nearest walk-in door is in the next city over. The Mental Health Hotline can talk through what’s going on and help you find the right next step in Norfolk, at any hour. Call 866-903-3787 when you’re ready.