Posts Tagged: mental health

Opinion

How to really create safe California schools

Image by Simone Hogan

OPINION – Legislation introduced this session in the California Assembly (AB 3038) would require all K-12 schools to have an armed police officer stationed on campus. Instead of being a meaningful step toward school safety, this is the latest example of a simplistic, inadequate, and politically expedient solution being offered based on the powerful myth that “good guys with guns” prevent acts of extreme violence.

News

Will California follow Oregon’s ‘strategic’ approach to psychedelics?

Image courtesy of 24K-Production

There is a growing acceptance in mental health circles that some psychedelics – particularly psilocybin, MDMA, Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and mescaline – have great promise for treating certain mental health disorders, including post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression. But some observers fear legalizing it could kick off a psilocybin Gold Rush that emphasizes profits over patient care.

News

Passing ‘grave disability’ reform was hard – getting counties to implement it has been harder

Image by Laura Faraci, Shutterstock

Long ignored or blocked by local officials and confusing laws – while tacitly expected to provide care for severely mentally ill relatives – families are mobilizing in growing numbers, exerting major influence over state legislation and public policy, and protesting county resistance to strong new laws mandating intervention, care and treatment.

News

Rosalynn Carter: A lifetime voice for improving mental health care

First Lady Rosalynn Carter, photo courtesy of AP

Tributes to First Lady Rosalynn Carter invariably cite her lifelong commitment to improving care for people with severe mental illness. As she stumped for her husband during the closing days of the 1976 presidential campaign, she brought that advocacy to the unlikely locale of Bakersfield.

Opinion

California’s behavioral health system is in trouble… still.

Image by Black Salmon

OPINION – California was already experiencing a workforce shortage among mental health care workers prior to the pandemic. A 2022 report from the California Health Care Foundation found that the state has less than 12 licensed psychiatrists and slightly more than 44 licensed psychologists per 100,000 people. Since-adopted payment reform has only made it worse.

News

Shifting politics pushes mental health care onto the agenda

Laura Wilcox, whose shooting death in Nevada County inspired "Laura's Law." (Family photo)

Ever since Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act in 1967 granting people with severe mental illness greater rights and speeding the emptying of state asylums, governors have been sidestepping the issue, until now. Unlike governors before him in this state or perhaps any other, Newsom is confronting the issue of untreated mental illness.

News

The Capitol Weekly interview: Sen. Susan Eggman’s long battle for mental health reform

Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, Assemblymembers Kevin McCarty and Jay Obernolte. Image by Associated Press

Widely regarded as the most knowledgeable and effective state legislator on mental health issues in the Legislature, Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) is credited with major, bipartisan legislative accomplishments over nearly 12 years, first in the Assembly, now in the Senate, where she chairs the Senate Health Committee.

Letters

Letter to the Editor: SB 43

LETTER – Who benefits from the expanded use of conservatorships in California? Is it for-profit mental health and hospital systems Senator Eggman is trained in? Jurisdictions tired of their homeless problem?

News

The complicated birth of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act

Frank Lanterman, photo courtesy of the Frank D. Lanterman Political Papers, Lanterman House Archives

For more than five decades, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act has been the foundation for how California treats or fails to treat people with severe mental illness. Now, legislators from both parties seek to overhaul it in ways that reflect advances in medicine, and a better understanding of its failings.

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