I am an Oakland-based narrative journalist with a focus on health and mental health care and other social issues.
Dozens of frail nursing home residents have been informed by their Medi-Cal managed care plans that they are no longer eligible for long-term care. Some health care advocates and legal aid attorneys fear that such terminations will increase as the state implements mandatory managed care for nursing home residents.
Dozens of frail nursing home residents have been informed by their Medi-Cal managed care plans that they are no longer eligible for long-term care. Some health care advocates and legal aid attorneys fear that such terminations will increase as the state implements mandatory managed care for nursing home residents.
Last December, Brighid FitzGibbon's son, Evan, entered a catatonic state. Acute psychosis had hit suddenly a few weeks earlier, toward the end of fall semester of his sophomore year at Bard College in upstate New York. Gripped by terrifying delusions, his body began to shut down.
Who's affected? Directly or indirectly, mental illnesses touch the lives of almost everyone in the state. The afflictions include: severe bipolar disorder, characterized by dramatic swings between mania and depression schizophrenia, which can involve symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations severe major depression, characterized by persistent sadness and disinterest These mental illnesses, and others, can impede people's ability to function and carry out the normal activities of daily life.
This summer, Tom Gray will lose his home. A slim man with hunched shoulders and a halting voice, Gray, 72, has schizophrenia. Before he landed in Carmen Palarca's board-and-care home 11 years ago, he spent 20 years living on the streets, many of them huddled in a doorway across from a San Francisco Whole Foods.
Elizabeth Brown's bedroom holds a trove of evidence of her fight to save herself. Preserved among the Twilight novels, the posters of Korean pop singers and cameras she used for her budding journalism career are clues to the Santa Rosa teenager's agonizing struggle with the mental illness that claimed her life last year.
Jeffrey Jurgens stood in a cage in an orange jumpsuit, screaming that he was Jesus Christ. From her seat in the Sacramento courtroom, his mother watched through tears. Joanna Jurgens knew how important it was for the district attorney prosecuting Jeffrey for stealing a car-and the judge deciding his fate-to see the extent of her son's illness.
S ix-week-old Jose Martinez Castillo stares up at his pediatrician and begins to scream. "I have a way with babies, don't I?" Dr. Salem Magarian intones, grinning at the baby's mother, Lisa Castillo, who is preparing a bottle of formula on the other side of the exam room.
For years, Diane Shinstock watched her adult son deteriorate on the streets. Suffering from severe schizophrenia, he slept under stairwells and bushes, screamed at passersby and was arrested for throwing rocks at cars. Sometimes he refused the housing options he was offered. Sometimes he got kicked out of places for bad behavior.
Anita Willis says the social worker offered her a painful choice: She could either leave the San Jose, Calif., nursing home where she'd spent a month recovering from a stroke - or come up with $336 a day to stay on. She had until midnight to decide.
Every few minutes, Abril begins to choke. Diagnosed as a baby with severe cerebral palsy and epilepsy, the Santa Cruz, California, 8-year-old has never spoken, or walked or cleared her own throat. Dozens of times a day, her parents, Rafael and Sonia, use a special machine to suction out saliva and phlegm from their older daughter's mouth.
Karen Wadsack stores her collection of broken teeth inside a tiny box. She considers each tooth essential evidence of a system that's failed her. For the past eight years, the 68-year-old Sacramento woman has been fighting the California Department of Health Care Services for appropriate dental treatment.
Kirsten Yeates was worried. Her newborn daughter, Riley, wouldn't sleep more than a few minutes without being held and rocked. At just a few weeks old, she'd begun vomiting several times a day. Yeates askedRiley's pediatrician what was wrong. He reassured her that Riley was fine,Yeates said.
The federal program Early Start, a statewide system to help infants and toddlers with developmental delays often fails to provide timely access to crucial therapies. The federal Office of Special Education Programs has notified the state Department of Developmental Services that the program had been demoted to "needs intervention" status - the only state in the country with such a low designation.
Social Security and senior nutrition programs were created to ensure that the elderly would not have to face hunger. But in some rural California communities, counties are struggling to keep up with requests for government-subsidized meals. More need means longer waiting lists - or more people flat-out turned away.
Since it was uploaded to YouTube, the video of Kimberly Turbin's 2013 episiotomy has been viewed more than 430,000 times. In the video, Turbin lies on her back in a hospital bed. Her knees are bent, her legs and feet are elevated above her in stirrups. She is trying to push the baby out.
In the months leading up to the presidential election, Guillermo and his friends at Oakland International High School had a running joke. "If Donald Trump wins," they'd tease each other, "go buy some suitcases." Then they'd laugh. They didn't think the candidate who was threatening to deport millions of undocumented immigrants stood a chance.
Baby Sergio's fever was spiking. His parents had just arrived in Watsonville from Mexico with no papers, no money, no family, no friends. They tried bringing down the fever. It didn't work. The baby started convulsing. An ambulance whisked the terrified young family to a local hospital.
Almost two decades ago, the state made Sacramento County the testing ground for a new model of delivering dental care to poor children. Officials envisioned a managed care system that would control costs and improve children's ability to see a dentist.
The first time Emily tried to kill herself, at age 15, she swallowed the entire contents of a bottle of Prozac, along with some Sudafed and Claritin she found in the medicine cabinet. "Mom," she said as they sped to the emergency room that morning in May 2012, "I just want to die."
By many measures, Marin County is among the healthiest places in California. But when it comes to the eyesight of children, Marin has for years had a more dubious distinction. Children dependent on Medi-Cal in the county receive eye exams and glasses at a much lower rate than their counterparts in most other counties in the state.
Two thin tubes that connect the ovaries to the uterus have assumed an outsize role in the battle against ovarian cancer. Research increasingly points to the likelihood that some of the most aggressive ovarian cancers originate in the fallopian tubes.
California's state auditor has launched an investigation of school districts and other local educational agencies to determine whether they are delivering enough treatment to children with serious mental illnesses. In 2011, a change in law shifted responsibility for decisions about the mental health care of students with disabilities from counties to the schools.
Felicita Soto remembers finding blood in the oddest places. On her pillow in the morning. In her sandwich after she took a bite. Once, a coworker whispered with disgust: "Felicita, you're bleeding." Soto felt mortified. She'd recently kicked a smoking habit she'd had since age 12. But it was too late for her teeth.
In recent years, Dr. Jason Bynum has seen the churn: teens in crisis cycling through his south Sacramento psychiatric hospital, admitted, released, and just a few months down the road, back with another breakdown. Increasingly, he lives with a deathly fear that his young patients are going to commit suicide after he sends them home.
The latest chapter of Kim Green's recurring nightmare began last fall. In October, her 24-year-old daughter - who suffers from severe bipolar disorder and a mood disorder related to schizophrenia - was booked into the county jail after being arrested on a probation violation.
DOYLE - Just before the turnoff into this tiny community, near the shuttered Burger Barn, a sign announcing Doyle's existence also hints at its fade toward oblivion. Underneath the name of the local clinic, Doyle Family Practice, someone has added the words: "Temporarily closed."
QUINCY, Plumas County - Diane Kantoff's job is to find specialists who will treat patients of the Plumas District Hospital Clinic in this quaint little town in the woods 80 miles northwest of Reno. These days, she said, when it comes to patients on Medi-Cal, doctors' offices frequently tell her "no" before she is even done speaking.
In 1992, football united a group of boys. Dangerous streets, however, beckoned. Some of the teammates would triumph, but tragedy was always near.
Psychiatric hospitalizations of Latino children and young adults in California are rising dramatically - at a much faster pace than among their white and black peers, according to state data. While mental health hospitalizations of young people of all ethnicities have climbed in recent years, Latino rates stand out.
Two decades ago, a group of well-connected, politically savvy families launched a world-leading research center-and fueled a debate over whether autism can and should be cured. For the first time in a long time, Chuck Gardner felt like he could breathe easy.
Essays
For my son, his desire for the dress is profoundly logical: He needs it to twirl. By Jocelyn Wiener "I want the yellow dress," begs the weeping, shrieking two-year-old boy crumpled at my bare feet. Still in my pajamas, I dig through my son's overstuffed dresser, scrambling to locate the pale cotton frock he has appropriated from his 4-year-old sister.
My daughter floats into the living room, cheeks flushed, hair rumpled. A hopeful smile flutters across her face. Her tongue wiggles something. "Could I have a loose tooth?" she asks, eyes wide. I peer in. Bottom front. Indisputable. Dora Lee is almost 5. She has spent most of the past year preparing for this moment.
The nightmare always ended the same way: I knelt in the back yard at night, trying to hide my three younger brothers in the sandbox while Nazis searched our house. What saved us, every time, was me waking up.
The white feathers floated everywhere. It took me a moment to discern their source. A woman, 30-something, slim and tired-looking, was trying to stuff a ratty down sleeping bag into a small plastic sack. My 4-year-old daughter, Dora Lee, was understandably intrigued - how often does she find a grown-up sitting on a dirty sidewalk surrounded by a cloud of feathers?
How a small piece of technology had a human-sized impact on a mother's relationship to her child.
To the owners of the house around the corner with the over-the-top holiday decorations, I just want to say: Thank you. Depending on one's stance on Russian election interference, border walls and fake news, this hasn't been the easiest holiday season. Then, yesterday, my children and I stumbled upon your house.
Jocelyn Wiener's grandmother sometimes imagines things, but when she heard that something bad had happened in Chicago, she wasn't confused.
I remember the first time it happened. We were at Baskin Robbins, placing an order for a cake, and my mom gave her last name as Wisner. I stared at her, confused. Wisner is a fine name. It just doesn't happen to be ours.
I can think of a lot of reasons not to bring a child into this world. War. Global warming. The price of college. The cost of health care. The growing income disparity between wealthy and poor. The Real Housewives. As a kid, I'd figured most of these problems would be solved by the time I had my own children.
Gammy can't see me anymore, but every time I visit, she tells me I'm beautiful. Gammy can't hear me well anymore, but she lights up at the sound of my voice. Gammy doesn't understand things the way she used to; the fog of time that's whiting out her eyesight is also encroaching on her mind.
Essays