Mental Health

CalMatters and CatchLight are partnering on a three-year initiative to tell powerful stories about mental health in California. We’ll spotlight solutions, personal stories, investigate systems, and bring greater awareness to this historically stigmatized topic. This initiative is supported by:

Enlight Foundation
California Health Care Foundation
Flourish Impact Fund
Lisa Stone Pritzker Family Foundation
Resonance Philanthropies
Sarlo Family Foundation
Sand Hill Foundation
Stuart Foundation

Kevin de León on a visit to the Statute of Liberty with his daughter, Lluvia de Milagros Carrasco. She is now 23 and pursuing a modeling career. Photo courtesy of de León.

Newsletters

A Kevin de León profile, internet privacy and carpeting

A new Kevin de León profile,carpet recycling quandaries, California's new internet privacy law, Los Angeles housing, Proposition 2 and our CALmatters quiz.

Dan Morain

• October 5, 2018

Community members gather for a rally in support of Christine Blasey Ford in front of City Hall on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018, in Palo Alto, Calif. Ford, testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about her allegations that Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her in the early 1980s. Photo by Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group

Newsletters

California’s election, women and Kavanaugh

Dan Morain

• September 28, 2018

Commentary

My turn: Paramedics need this bill to help vulnerable people

Too many vulnerable people are trapped in crowded hospital emergency rooms who didn’t need to be there. The emergency room revolving door isn’t helping them, and it’s putting other critical patients at risk.

Guest Commentary

• September 21, 2018

A homeless man on the street in San Francisco. Conservatorship law complicates treatment for mentally ill homeless Californians.

Newsletters

Work undone, deals unraveled

Calfornia shelved a big police reform bill, the bail bonds industry announced plans to launch a referendum, SB 100 went to the goverrnor, and a lead paint deal failed.

Dan Morain

• August 30, 2018

Health

Why is it so hard to get mentally ill Californians into treatment? Three bills tell the tale

The Legislature's struggle this year to pass even one partial solution to untreated mental illness illustrates the complex philosophical, legal and ethical questions that surround conservatorship in California.

Jocelyn Wiener

• August 29, 2018

Sifting through the debris of the 2017 wildfire in Santa Rosa. Photo via California National Guard

Newsletters

Who’s going to pay for the fires

California legislators confront the question of how to pay for fire damage. Should PG&E be relieved of costs related to devastating 2017 wildfires, and should the law be changed for future fires?

Dan Morain

• July 13, 2018

Newsletters

Initiatives you won’t and will vote on this November

California legislators averted costly initiative wars on privacy, lead paint and soda taxes. But voters will decide daylight savings time and gas tax repeal in November. San Francisco Mayor-elect London Breed urged legislators to expand car for mentally ill homeless people.

Dan Morain

• June 29, 2018

Woman confronting lengthy ballot. Illustration by Dan Hubig for CALmatters

Elections

Brace yourself, Californians: Here are the 12 ballot measures you get to decide in November

After months of signature gathering and legislative wrangling, here's the final list of propositions that made the cut for the November election.

Ben Christopher

• June 28, 2018

The feet of Mr. Murphy, who has been on Skid Row for a year. Outreach workers are not sure where he came from. Photos by Dan Morain for CALmatters

Economy

A walk along Skid Row in Los Angeles—block by bleak block

Nowhere is California's homelessness crisis more evident than here, where some 2,000 people hunker down for the night on sleeping pads, cardboard, or nothing.

Dan Morain

• June 27, 2018

Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Assemblyman Evan Low of Campbell, both Democrats who are gay, present a bill to ban for-profit conversion therapy services in California. Photo by Robbie Short for CALmatters

Justice

Emotional fight over conversion therapy: Should California limit services meant to turn gay people straight?

Scientists and LGBTQ groups want California to become the nation's first state to ban what they see as a harmful, prejudice-driven practice. But First Amendment purists and some religious conservatives argue that would curtail liberty.

Robbie Short

• June 24, 2018