Nine months after giving birth, Caitlin Martin is still waiting to bring her son home from the hospital. Her son Connor uses a feeding tube and relies on a tracheostomy and a ventilator to breathe.
Nothing about us without us” is a disability rights mantra going back several decades. Its meaning is as simple as it sounds: policies affecting people with disabilities should not be created without the full and direct participation of those most impacted.
Two Los Angeles County supervisors are calling on health officials to find alternatives to physically restraining patients, voicing concerns after a Times investigation found an L.A. County-run hospital has been restraining psychiatric inpatients at higher rates than any other California facility.
California lawmakers gave final approval late Thursday to a significant overhaul of the state’s landmark 1967 behavioral health law, part of an ongoing effort to address a statewide mental illness crisis made worse by homelessness and illicit drugs, such as fentanyl and methamphetamine.
California will expand its standards for involuntary medical treatment to include people whose mental illness or drug addiction inhibits their ability to keep themselves safe, under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Gov. Gavin Newsom today announced he signed the first of a series of bills that aim to transform California’s mental health system. Depending on who you ask, this transformation represents a long overdue humanitarian response— or a worrisome step backward on civil liberties.
The VA Loma Linda Health Care System is violating the civil liberties of some veterans seeking voluntary mental health evaluations by placing them on involuntary psychiatric holds as a precondition of their transportation to a hospital or treatment facility, according to patient advocacy organizations.
Huntington Beach will ask voters in March if they want to implement voter identification requirements and local monitoring of ballot drop boxes in its elections, despite legal warnings from state officials that advised against placing the controversial proposals on ballots.
A handful of counties in California are getting ready to roll out a new, controversial court program aimed at getting people off the streets and into mental health or drug treatment facilities.
An alternative mental health court program designed to fast-track people with untreated schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders into housing and medical care — potentially without their consent — kicked off in seven California counties, including San Francisco, on Monday.
All over California, people with serious mental illness are living in nursing homes that experts say weren’t meant to care for them — an investigation by LAist, APM Research Lab and The California Newsroom reveals.
California Assembly Health Committee members unanimously passed the Behavioral Health Services Act through Senate Bill 326 during their meeting last month, despite strong opposition from meeting attendees.
The California State Senate this week passed the California Mandela Act, otherwise known as AB 280, with a supermajority vote after the bill was approved by the California Assembly earlier this year, announced the CA Mandela Campaign.
A new bill has reached the desk of California Gov. Gavin Newsom that would bar the state’s public and charter schools from suspending or expelling students in sixth through twelfth grades for “willful defiance,” a largely undefined violation frequently meted out to students of color.
A last-minute change to one of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature mental health proposals this week shocked advocates for disabled Californians, who called the move a “bait and switch” that could open the door to the involuntary institutionalization of people with mental health illnesses.
A bill to bar suspension of students for low-level behavior issues known as "willful defiance" in California’s public schools through 12th grade passed both houses in the Legislature this week.
Youth at the Kings County Juvenile Center are frequently shackled, “body-slammed,” pepper-sprayed and mistreated, according to a report release last week by Disability Rights California (DRC) and Disability Rights Advocates (DRA).
This report outlines findings from a multi-year investigation of the conditions at the Kings County Juvenile Center. DRC and DRA call on Kings County to reform what they claim are horrific conditions and needlessly punitive practices at the detention center.
