Psychiatric Care for Veterans, Service Members, and Military Families in Chesapeake, VA

Who we are

Care From Clinicians Who Wore the Uniform

Justin Ray, MSN, PMHNP-BC, the founder of South Chesapeake Psychiatry, served twenty-two years on active duty in the Navy and became the Navy's first psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner with independent admitting privileges. Amanda Snow, MSN, PMHNP-BC, is a retired Navy nurse with twenty-five years in mental health. You will not need to explain what a deployment does to a marriage, what a sea-duty rotation does to sleep, or why a PCS every three years makes it nearly impossible to keep a psychiatric provider.

That shared background matters for a simple reason: the evaluation goes faster and deeper when your clinician already understands the context. It also means we know the difference between a normal reaction to an abnormal environment and a condition that needs treatment.

What we treat

Common Reasons Service Members, Veterans, and Families Come to Us

Hampton Roads is home to one of the largest concentrations of military personnel in the country, and the psychiatric needs that come with that are specific. We evaluate and treat adults with:

• Post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related conditions, including symptoms that surfaced years after separation
• Depression and anxiety, including the low mood and loss of purpose that often follow retirement or transition to civilian work
• Sleep disturbance, nightmares, and the insomnia that outlasts the deployment that caused it
• ADHD in adults, which frequently goes unrecognized in people who thrived on military structure and struggled once it was gone
• Bipolar disorder and other serious mental illness, including long-acting injectable medication management
• Alcohol use that has crept from coping into a problem, addressed alongside the mood or anxiety condition underneath it
• Treatment-resistant depression, with SPRAVATO® available through TRIP for eligible clients

We also evaluate spouses and adult family members, for whom the strain of military life is real but rarely acknowledged: solo parenting through deployments, career interruption from repeated moves, and the anxiety of waiting for a phone call.

How we work

A Full Hour, a Real Diagnosis, and a Plan You Understand

Every new client begins with a 60-minute psychiatric evaluation. Military records tend to be long on screening scores and short on the story, so we take the time to get the story: what happened, when the symptoms started, what has been tried, what worked, what did not, and what you actually want to be different.

We are direct about medication. Some medications that are commonly prescribed for PTSD or sleep are sedating, habit-forming, or incompatible with certain duty statuses, flight status, or security roles. We will tell you which options fit your situation and which do not, and we will document what you need documented.

Working with the VA and TRICARE

We Coordinate With the System Rather Than Compete With It

Many of our veteran clients also use the Hampton VA Medical Center, a Vet Center, or a military treatment facility such as Naval Medical Center Portsmouth. With your permission we coordinate with those providers, share treatment summaries, and avoid duplicating or conflicting prescriptions. If you are waiting months for a VA psychiatric appointment, we can often see you within days and hand off cleanly when your VA care begins.

South Chesapeake Psychiatry is self-pay for evaluations and medication management. A 60-minute initial evaluation is $300. SPRAVATO® treatment through TRIP is billed to insurance, and our staff verifies your benefits before you start. See our pricing page for details.