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Mayors, city managers and mental health professionals from across the Hampton Roads region came together Thursday to discuss violence prevention and the importance of mental health.

The Hampton Roads Mayors and Chief Administrative Officers Violence Prevention Roundtable took place March 30 at the Regional Building in Chesapeake. 

The work session saw both Suffolk’s Mayor Michael D. Duman and City Manager Albert S. Moor II alongside their counterparts from Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Smithfield, and the rest of the Hampton Roads area to discuss ways to prevent criminal violence, as well as discuss on the need to address mental health and unresolved trauma.

Hampton City Manager Mary Bunting spoke on the importance of both topics, but also the importance of not equating the two.

“There has been some media attention recently about linking mental health and gun violence, and that’s not what we’re necessarily trying to do with this,” Bunting made clear at the meeting. “What we are saying… is there is a lot of unaddressed trauma that leads to bad behaviors, and not everyone with unaddressed trauma is going to commit a crime, but there is a lot of unaddressed trauma particularly with the folks that we are seeing incarcerated in our city.”