Depressed and alone, a young woman sits beside the ocean. (Photo: PKpix, via Shutterstock)
OPINION: Debates about the Governor’s CARE Courts program have raged across the state in recent months. A major point of contention is whether Californians with mental health challenges will be helped or hurt by being pushed into the legal system.
The entrance to a hospital emergency room. (Photo: Johnson Photography, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Our California Legislature is considering a bill — AB 1300 by Assemblymember Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, D-Los Angeles — that would allow emergency room (ER) physicians to release psychiatric patients brought into their ER’s on a psychiatric detention, known as a “5150”, without any input from a psychiatrist. Currently, when a patient in psychiatric crisis is brought to an ER on a “5150”, the hospital discharges the patient to a psychiatric facility where that patient receives a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation.
Caesar, a dog trained to sniff out cell phones, searches the state prison in Vacaville. (Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli)The Marshall Project: Two years ago, a Belgian Malinois named Drako earned a flurry of press attention when his proud owners at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced he had found his thousandth contraband cell phone in the state’s prisons. He’d once found thirty stashed in a microwave, and one hidden in a jar of peanut butter.
OPINION: The Legislature had a critical opportunity to help increase access to medical services and reduce the wait times for patients who need ocular services. SB 492 would have allowed doctors of optometry to perform limited laser and minor procedures around the eye and freed up ophthalmologists to perform the complex surgical procedures only they are trained and educated to perform.