Jae Janea, now 22, knows the pattern firsthand. Last summer, after four days without speaking to another person, she walked into a dollar store, bought a pack of razor blades, and went home to cut her wrists. She believed she was ready to end her life. Instead, she called her closest friend, who talked her through making a tourniquet and rushed to her side. The next morning, the two went to urgent care together.

“It was in that moment when I realized I don’t want to be gone. I just don’t want to feel this intense pain,” Janea said. “I was trying to find a way to make it stop. But it was absolutely not the appropriate way. I wish I could tell myself differently then.”

Janea had struggled with self-harm for years before that night. Since her attempt, she has rebuilt her life around structure and support — more frequent therapy, better nutrition, regular exercise, and learning to create emotional distance from overwhelming feelings. She still feels the urge to hurt herself at times. But she’s far from alone.

National data show emergency room visits tied to self-harm rose sharply through 2021, and in California those numbers remain higher than pre-pandemic levels even as broader indicators of teen mental distress have declined, according to research from the Public Policy Institute of California. The 2026 State of the Girl Report from Girl Scouts of California found that nearly a quarter of seventh-grade girls reported self-harming.

A recent analysis out of UC Berkeley found a significant increase in multiracial adolescent girls being treated for self-harm injuries at California hospitals. Emily Liu, the study’s lead author, said the overall number of adolescents in the state engaging in self-harm continues to grow. Drawing on inpatient and emergency room discharge records from 2005 through 2021, researchers found more than 70% of those cases involved girls, with the highest rates by 2021 found among multiracial, white and Black girls between 15 and 19 years old.

Youth mental health has been a stated priority under Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose administration backed a 2024 ballot measure that directed billions of dollars toward expanding treatment capacity. In 2022, Newsom also approved a $4.3 billion boost to youth mental health programs as part of the state budget. More recently, the California Department of Public Health rolled out a statewide prevention plan aimed at reducing suicide, self-harm, overdose deaths and behavioral health disparities.

Still, students and school officials say significant gaps remain. Newsom vetoed bills in both 2022 and 2023 that would have further expanded mental health services for young people.

Shalini Mustala, a researcher with the Public Policy Institute of California, told state lawmakers at a recent hearing that rates of depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts among teens have climbed steadily since 2009, and that hospitalizations for self-harm remain elevated well after the pandemic’s peak.

“Ongoing evaluation of these investments will play an important role in refining strategies for effectively addressing student mental health needs,” Mustala said.

Dr. Janis Whitlock, an emeritus research scientist at Cornell University who has studied self-injury for more than two decades, cautions that while self-harm is a risk factor for suicide, the two are not the same. Non-suicidal self-injury — often used interchangeably with self-harm — involves repeatedly hurting oneself, typically through cutting, scratching or burning, to relieve intense emotional pain rather than to end one’s life.

Most people who self-harm never end up in an emergency room, Whitlock said. When a student injures themselves at school, protocol often calls for a 911 report treating it as a suicide attempt, even though that’s rarely the intent.

“Most of the time people who self-injure don’t want to end up in an ER,” she said. “That isn’t their goal. The goal is to feel better. The goal is to be able to function.”

A hidden struggle in communities of color

Dawn L. Brown, president and CEO of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit EmpowHer, has spent years supporting teens who self-harm. Her organization partners with Title 1 schools across Los Angeles County, serving roughly 1,000 girls of color from low-income communities each year.

Nationally, about 17% of teens report some form of self-injury, though studies suggest the rate climbs to between 17% and 35% among college students. Brown said many of the girls she works with are grappling with fears of school shootings, threats to their bodily autonomy, immigration concerns and financial insecurity.

The Girl Scouts USA State of the Girl report found that nonbinary students report the highest levels of emotional distress, with 61% describing chronic sadness and more than half of nonbinary ninth-graders reporting self-harm.

“So many of our girls are feeling this overwhelming sense that they are being attacked for who they are. We do have a large population of LGBTQIA+ youth,” Brown said. “I think that plays a big role as to why we’re seeing an increase of Black and Latina girls self-harming, because they are being ignored and disregarded.”

Research points to a strong connection between self-injury and trauma. While some studies show modest demographic variation in who self-harms based on ethnicity and income, Whitlock said the differences are not dramatic — and nationally, rates among young girls continue to climb across the board.

“Self-harm absolutely is stigmatized as a white girl problem — historically it has not impacted us in the same way, but self-harm has always happened in the Black community,” Brown said. “From a cultural standpoint we tend to sweep those things under the rug. We don’t have open conversations about those things. The idea is, don’t put our business out there in the street.”

From hopelessness to healing

Janea describes her childhood as marked by trauma. As a biracial teenager, she often felt she lacked the support she needed. At 12, her life was upended when her father attempted to kill her mother and cousin and tried to kidnap her; he was later sent to prison. Eight months later, at just 13, Janea attempted suicide.

During her stay in a psychiatric hospital, she found it difficult to open up to her therapist, and it was around that time that she began self-harming. Over the following years, she cycled in and out of outpatient psychiatric care as a persistent sense of hopelessness took hold.

At 15, she was sexually assaulted — an experience that, painfully, pushed her toward greater honesty in therapy.

“That caused me to open up too, because that made me feel very uncomfortable with myself,” she said. “Hearing those comforting and reassuring words from a therapist is what I needed to hear instead of what I was hearing from my family.”

Two years later, Janea was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder — a topic she now discusses openly with her more than 200,000 followers on Instagram. She created the page, she said, so others wouldn’t feel alone and to remind people that “we are more than a label.”

Janea has weathered profound loss since then, including the deaths of a close friend and her beloved dog. But she credits her support network, new friendships and continued therapy with helping her move forward from her suicide attempt.

“There’s been a lot of behaviors that I had to ditch that no longer serve me. Even though they once fulfilled me at a younger age, they kept me safe or they kept me sane,” she said. “Now I don’t need to keep it in my circle anymore. Being able to learn a different coping mechanism that can help me through those same intense feelings was helpful within my healing journey.”

A gap in research and care

Much of the existing research on self-harm gets folded into broader studies on suicidality, even though clinicians say the two are distinct. Dr. Jill Harkavy-Friedman, senior vice president of research at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, explained that people who self-harm are not seeking to die — that would constitute a suicide attempt. Self-harm, by contrast, is typically an attempt to find relief from unbearable emotional pain.

When Whitlock began studying self-injury decades ago, there was little existing research to build on. In 2004, she founded the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery to study what was then a little-understood phenomenon now widely referred to as non-suicidal self-injury. Though the body of research has grown since, it still lags far behind the amount dedicated to suicide.

Much of what is known about self-injury rates comes from self-reported surveys or hospital discharge records, like those used in the UC Berkeley study. But Whitlock notes that many people who self-harm avoid seeking care altogether, often because of how they’ve been treated by medical providers in the past.

“Doctors will say, ‘I can’t believe I’m taking up time to stitch you up after you did this to yourself,'” Whitlock said, describing the kind of judgment that can drive people away from treatment. She urges the providers she trains to lead with compassion instead.

Janea has experienced that judgment herself — she recalls being labeled “drug-seeking” by one provider after asking for pain medication for a self-inflicted wound. Other therapists, she said, were far more supportive. She hopes other young Black and Latina girls facing similar struggles won’t let negative experiences with providers stand in the way of healing.

“You can absolutely become better after everything that you’ve dealt with,” she said. “I’m accepting that these bad things have happened to me, but they don’t make up who I am as a person. I can continue to change the trajectory of my life.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Self-Harm Among Girls Is Rising — But Many Cases Never Reach the ER appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

“It’s not just that I wake up in prison every day and that reminds me of the harm I caused,” she said. “It’s about how I choose to live my life. It’s about being in Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s about being part of these programs for impaired drivers. Sharing my story in those spaces is what keeps me sober.”

Her story is not an easy one to tell.

On Dec. 8, 2020, Coleman ran a red light and crashed into a car carrying a family of five. Gabriela Andrade and Henry Saldana-Mejia were killed. Their three young daughters, buckled into the back seat, survived with injuries.

Drunk-driving deaths leave behind grieving families and unanswered questions. Without any intent to hurt anyone, offenders like Coleman are often left trying to reconcile who they are with what they’ve done.

More than 1,300 people die each year in California in alcohol-related crashes, though it’s difficult to track exactly how many drivers are prosecuted and convicted for causing those deaths, since homicide statutes don’t always distinguish whether alcohol was involved.

Coleman is serving her sentence at a moment when California’s approach to rehabilitation is shifting. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed reforms aimed at preparing incarcerated people for parole and successful reentry into society. Decades of tough-on-crime policy and mass incarceration are slowly giving way to trauma-informed programming and expanded opportunities for those willing to examine why they made the choices that led them to prison.

It’s a difficult road, and many offenders never fully walk it. Some take years, even decades, to come to terms with what happened. Others never do. Coleman began working on herself almost immediately.

“At first I thought, okay, I need therapy,” she said. “I need to take care of my mental health. Clearly something is wrong with me if I wake up and find out I’ve killed people. That doesn’t just happen.”

While awaiting trial at the Orange County Jail, Coleman met face-to-face with surviving relatives of Andrade and Saldana-Mejia — a rare opportunity for a defendant, especially before sentencing. Her defense attorney, the judge, the prosecutor and the family’s attorney all helped arrange the meeting. Coleman listened to their grief, absorbed their loss and answered their questions through tears.

“As a daughter, an only child, I knew what it felt like to have my parents mean everything to me,” she said. “And I just couldn’t stand the thought of having taken away the two most important people in a child’s life.”

Soon after that 2022 meeting, Coleman pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and accepted a sentence of 21 years to life.

“For me, it really started that day,” she said. “Any denial I was still holding onto disappeared. Any selfishness I still had — worrying about myself and what was going to happen to me — stopped mattering so much.”

“But at the same time, it also brought a sense of hope, as opposed to all that crushing hopelessness.”

Attorney Jeff Roberts represented the victims’ family and remembers Coleman from that private 2022 meeting. He also questioned her during depositions in a related wrongful-death lawsuit. “I got to know Grace a little bit, and I know she has her own story too,” Roberts said. “She had a pretty rough situation, even though she came across as a privileged young woman.”

Roberts said he hopes Coleman leaves prison ready to keep sharing her story and helping others avoid drunk driving and substance abuse. He was surprised to learn her sentence doesn’t come with a fixed release date.

“Grace deserved a substantial sentence,” Roberts said. “But I don’t think it should be a life sentence, because frankly, killing two people and orphaning three kids is already a life sentence. Emotionally, she’ll never get over it.”

## Mental Health Behind Bars

Coleman’s grim reality began in a hospital bed after the crash. She woke up disoriented, sedated and in pain, her left arm in a sling and her right wrist handcuffed to the bed rail.

A nurse, working with limited information, delivered the devastating news while a police officer stood by silently.

“I didn’t know what had happened, who I had killed, or even how I ended up in my car that night,” Coleman said. “Because the last thing I remember, I wasn’t anywhere near my car. So I had a lot of questions.”

Within days she was moved to a medical unit inside the jail. COVID-19 restrictions had shut down visitation almost entirely, and information trickled in slowly. It took weeks for Coleman to piece together what had actually happened.

Her boyfriend at the time had dropped her off at home just before the crash. A day fueled by alcohol, drugs and a toxic relationship should have ended there, with him leaving her stumbling toward her front door, keys in hand. Instead, in a blackout, she got into her Range Rover and drove off.

Once in jail, she began seeing a private mental health specialist who was allowed in despite pandemic restrictions. Coleman said she’d always believed in the value of therapy, but this was the first time she truly gave herself over to it.

“I describe it as an identity crisis, because you’re stripping away layer after layer of yourself and going through this massive transition,” Coleman said.

Weekly therapy sessions, combined with the clarity of newfound sobriety, helped Coleman dig into the roots of her substance abuse. She began to understand how a deep lack of self-worth fed her codependency and her compulsive need to please others. For years, she had been the girl who always said yes — who genuinely wanted to say yes to everything.

“The crime never would have happened without severe alcoholism, and going back to the reasons why I drank, or how I ended up in those states,” she said.

Coleman, a 22-year-old white woman from Laguna Beach, worried how other incarcerated women would react to her background and privilege. Her case had made local television headlines, and word traveled fast. To get by, she needed to connect with the people around her — to show humility rather than entitlement.

She leaned on her faith in God to manage the anxiety and stress she had once numbed with alcohol, marijuana and Xanax. The jail offered few formal rehabilitation programs, so Coleman found her own ways to stay motivated.

“There was no way I could keep going without building some kind of spiritual foundation — something that gave me a reason to live,” she said.

She organized Christian fellowship groups and recovery circles with other women in custody. She found community in cooking and sharing meals. She exercised relentlessly and carved out space in cramped cells to meditate and practice yoga.

Friends from high school and college who came to visit were struck by how healthy she looked. Their last memories of her before jail were of someone constantly high or drunk. They were relieved to see the clear-eyed person they always knew she could be.

“I had to leave that party version of myself behind,” she said. “It was hard, honestly, because I felt like being fun and outgoing was part of my identity. But I realized I could still be that person without being, you know, the friend who blacks out drunk.”

## Adjusting to Life in Prison

The plea deal reflected Coleman’s determination to move forward. She knew little about the prison system at the time, but during her 18 months in county custody, she learned that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation offered more structured programming and educational opportunities than jail did.

When Coleman arrived at her first prison in the fall of 2022, other women serving time for drunk-driving offenses welcomed her into support groups. Hearing stories similar to her own helped her realize she didn’t have to carry the weight of guilt and shame alone.

She also found healing in telling her own story to others. She became deeply involved with Alcoholics Anonymous and discovered FADD — Felons Against Distracted and Drunk Driving.

Still, consistent mental health care proved harder to come by once she entered the prison system. Coleman kept up some phone sessions with her private therapist, but they never matched the depth of in-person conversations. Relying on the prison’s own mental health services meant being randomly assigned psychiatrists and psychologists, each with different approaches and priorities.

Inside prison, seeking mental health treatment carried its own risks — stigma and judgment from other inmates. Therapy or medication could be seen as a sign of weakness. Many worried how a psychiatric diagnosis might affect their chances before the parole board.

“I come from a generation that strongly believes in mental health and therapy as something positive and healthy,” Coleman said. “So walking into the prison system and running into all this stigma, and the fear that comes with it, was a real culture shock.”

She found herself at a crossroads as she adjusted to the realities of long-term incarceration. Many young offenders in her position might have slipped into the same patterns that landed them in prison — fighting, chaos, contraband, drugs.

Coleman chose a different path. Her focus on self-improvement and rehabilitation connected her with women twice or three times her age who had spent decades behind bars.

“Everyone around me is older,” she said. “I’m always the youngest, usually by about 20 years.”

She watched parole hearings come and go without guaranteeing anyone’s release. She saw the toll that aging in prison takes. It made her reckon with her own uncertain future.

“I look at the older women here, especially the ones doing the same work I’m doing,” she said. “Because one day, that could be me, or I could be them. With a life sentence, I know there’s no guarantee I’ll ever go home.”

## Navigating Treatment Decisions

Because staying sober is central to her recovery, Coleman initially worried that antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication might set her back. She turned down prescriptions offered by prison psychiatrists.

Exercise, yoga and support groups remained her primary tools for staying grounded, along with her faith.

In October 2023, Coleman was transferred to the lower-security California Institution for Women in Chino, which offered a calmer environment and stronger rehabilitative programming.

She began teaching yoga and found programs suited to her needs. She quickly became a lead facilitator in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and joined Responsibly Driven, a specialized program aimed at helping people understand the decision-making patterns behind substance abuse.

She pursued vocational training in video production and joined the prison newsletter staff. Community leaders eventually brought her onto the Inmate Advisory Council.

But internally, she still struggled.

Sabrina Limon befriended Coleman soon after she arrived, the two bonding over their shared commitment to sobriety and working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

“You could see the anxiety in her face and body language,” Limon said. “It seemed like she was searching for something, asking herself, ‘What am I supposed to do? Where do I go?’ That anxiety was very visible.”

Limon, 46, has been incarcerated since 2016 and has dealt with her own anxiety and depression, but for years avoided seeking psychological help. “There’s a lot of talk in prison that the parole board will hold it against you. That fear is real.”

The California Institution for Women eventually opened a counseling center on-site, making mental health resources easier to access. Inmates can join therapist-led support groups or receive individual counseling without being formally classified as psychiatric patients.

That open-door approach made it easier for Coleman to talk to someone and find the right kind of treatment. She eventually enrolled in the facility’s psychiatric care program and came to accept that her sobriety didn’t have to exclude prescribed medication for anxiety and depression, taken under a psychiatrist’s supervision.

“Anxiety is part of my daily life,” Coleman said. “It’s something I ignored for a long time, and that’s part of why I turned to alcohol and marijuana. So acknowledging my anxiety today really matters.”

Limon noticed the shift therapy brought to Coleman’s life and was moved by her openness about it — enough to seek her own treatment.

“I’ve seen a real change in Grace when it comes to her anxiety and mental health because of her individual work with a therapist,” Limon said. “I decided to check it out for myself. And sure enough, thanks to Grace, I now have a therapist. It’s wonderful. It’s helping me so much.”

## Rehabilitation and the Road to Parole

Because she was 22 when she committed her crime, Coleman qualifies as a youth offender under California law, which means she’ll be eligible for a parole hearing in 2033.

Her first shot at release will hinge on what she does — and who she becomes — between now and then.

“Rehabilitation isn’t handed to us on a silver platter,” Coleman said. “It’s something we actively have to work for.”

She runs laps around the facility’s main yard to clear her head, even on days when the Inland Empire heat climbs past 90 degrees. But her yoga mat, she says, remains her true refuge.

Illicit drugs find their way into nearly every prison population one way or another, and substance abuse remains a constant temptation for anyone serious about rehabilitation.

Coleman lives in a housing unit where residents commit to a code of accountability. Within that unit, participants in the Prison Pup Program care for and train rescue dogs to become service animals — a privilege that requires a clean record and regular drug testing.

“You see a lot of people who want to start doing better and are looking for a better environment to stay sober in,” she said. “They come here hoping to find a positive support system that helps them get out of that cycle.”

Coleman fills her days with purposeful work and outside partnerships. She serves as a storyteller for the UC Sentencing Project. Poetic Justice gives her a creative outlet to process trauma and healing through writing. And ReEvolution brings together formerly incarcerated mentors and advocates to lead discussions on restorative justice — examining both the harm people have suffered and the harm they’ve caused.

Barbara Van Sickle, executive director of ReEvolution, visits the prison regularly and has spent considerable time with Coleman in group sessions.

“I’ve watched her reach a place where she lives with responsibility, accountability and remorse, to the point where it feels almost too heavy to carry,” Van Sickle said. “But I think she’s working through it with a lot of self-reflection, and she’s starting to rediscover her own worth.”

This story was produced in partnership with CalMatters and CatchLight as part of a mental health reporting initiative, supported by the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Convicted at 22, She’s Spent Years Behind Bars Searching for Redemption appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

“It’s not even just as simple as, oh, I wake up in prison every day and that in itself is a reminder of the harm that I’ve caused,” Coleman said. “It’s the way that I choose to live my life. It’s being in AA. It’s being a part of these DUI programs. Sharing my story in those spaces, that’s what keeps me sober.”

Her story is a hard one to tell.

On Dec. 8, 2020, Coleman ran a red light and slammed into a car carrying a family of five. Gabriela Andrade and Henry Saldana-Mejia were killed. Their three young daughters, strapped in the backseat, were injured but survived.

DUI-related homicides often leave victims’ families and entire communities searching for answers. Without any intent to harm, the person responsible is frequently left trying to reconcile the person they were with the damage they caused.

More than 1,300 alcohol-related driving deaths occur each year in California, though it’s difficult to know exactly how many of those cases lead to criminal charges or convictions, since state murder statutes don’t separately track DUI-related homicides.

Coleman is now serving her sentence at a time when California’s approach to prison rehabilitation continues to shift. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed reforms designed to better prepare incarcerated people for parole and successful reentry into society. After decades of tough-on-crime policy, the state has increasingly embraced trauma-informed programming and second-chance opportunities for those willing to examine why they did what they did.

That kind of self-examination is not something every offender is ready to take on — some need years, some decades, some never get there. But Coleman said she began working on herself almost immediately.

“In the beginning, I was like, all right — I clearly got to get therapy,” she said. “I need to get my mental health in check. Clearly something is wrong with me if I just woke up and found out I killed people. This doesn’t just happen.”

While awaiting trial in Orange County Jail, Coleman met face-to-face with relatives of Andrade and Saldana-Mejia — a rare occurrence, especially before a conviction. Her defense attorney, the judge, the prosecutor and the family’s lawyer all helped arrange the meeting. Coleman listened to the family’s grief and tried, through her own tears, to answer their questions.

“As a daughter, and as an only daughter, I knew that feeling that my parents were my everything,” she said. “And I just couldn’t even, like, stand the fact that I had taken away the two most important people in a child’s life.”

Soon after that 2022 meeting, Coleman pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and was sentenced to 21 years to life in prison.

“For me, it definitely started with that day,” she said. “Any bit of denial that I was stuck in was gone. Any bit of selfishness that I still had — and caring about myself and what was going to happen to me — didn’t seem to matter as much anymore. But it definitely at the same time brought a sense of hope versus just all of this devastating hopelessness.”

Jeff Roberts, who represented the victims’ family, recalled meeting Coleman during that private sit-down and later during depositions for a civil wrongful death lawsuit. “I did get to know Grace a little bit, and I know she’s got a story too,” Roberts said. “She had a bit of a broken situation, even though she seemed like a young lady of privilege.”

Roberts said he hopes Coleman will eventually leave prison and continue warning others about the dangers of drunken driving and substance abuse. He admitted he was surprised her sentence doesn’t come with a guaranteed release date.

“Grace needed to serve a good length of time,” Roberts said. “But I don’t think she needed to serve a life sentence, because quite frankly — that she killed two people and left three people orphaned is a life sentence. Emotionally, she won’t forget about that.”

Coleman’s ordeal began in a hospital bed, where she woke up groggy, sedated and confused. Her left arm was in a sling; her right wrist was cuffed to the bed rail. A nurse gave her the barest details while a police officer stood by in silence.

“I didn’t know what happened, who I killed, how I even got into my car that night,” Coleman said. “Because the last thing I remembered, I was nowhere near my car — so I had a lot of questions.”

She was later moved to a jail medical unit under COVID lockdown conditions, with visits suspended and communication limited. It took weeks for her to fully understand what had happened.

Her boyfriend had dropped her off at home shortly before the crash. What should have ended with her stumbling toward her front door instead ended with her getting behind the wheel of her Range Rover in a blackout, fueled by alcohol, drugs and the tension of a troubled relationship.

In jail, she began meeting with a private mental health specialist who was allowed to see her despite pandemic restrictions. Coleman said she had always believed in therapy but had never fully committed to it before.

“I talk about it like an identity crisis, because you’re stripping away layers of yourself and going through such a huge transition in your life,” she said.

Weekly sessions and newfound sobriety helped her examine what had led to her substance abuse — a deep lack of self-worth, codependent patterns and years of trying to be the person who always said yes.

“The crime would have never happened without deep levels of alcoholism, and then, bringing it back to the reasons why I drank or how I even ended up in these alcoholic states,” she said.

As a 22-year-old white woman from Laguna Beach, Coleman worried how others in jail might view her privilege. Her case had been covered on local television, and many recognized her. To get by, she said, she needed both humility and self-assurance.

She leaned on her faith to manage anxiety she once numbed with alcohol, marijuana and Xanax. With little formal programming available in jail, she created her own routines — organizing nondenominational worship and recovery groups, collecting positive affirmations, cooking with others and carving out space to practice yoga and meditation.

When old friends visited, they were struck by how healthy she looked compared to the years when she had been drinking heavily.

“That party girl version of me was something that I had to let go of,” she said. “I struggled with that for sure because I felt it was like a part of who I was — being fun and being social. But I realized I could be all of those things without needing to be like, you know, that horrible blacked out friend.”

Her guilty plea reflected her desire to move forward, even though she had little understanding of how the state prison system worked. During her 18 months in county jail, she learned that CDCR could offer more structured rehabilitative programs and education opportunities than she’d had access to before.

When Coleman arrived at her first state prison in fall 2022, other DUI offenders welcomed her into peer support circles, where she heard stories that mirrored her own and realized she wasn’t alone in carrying guilt, shame and grief.

She became active in Alcoholics Anonymous and later discovered Felons Against Distracted and Drunk Driving, known as FADD.

The transition to prison made consistent mental health treatment more difficult. Phone sessions with her old therapist weren’t the same as in-person visits, and the prison health system assigned her a rotating cast of psychiatrists and psychologists, each with different approaches.

Within prison culture, seeking mental health treatment could also carry a stigma — some feared it might be seen as weakness or hurt their chances before the parole board.

“I come from the generation who very much believe in mental health and therapy as a positive thing and, like, a healthy thing,” Coleman said. “So coming into the prison system and there being this whole stigma, but also fear of it, was very different to me.”

As she adjusted to long-term incarceration, Coleman gravitated toward rehabilitation-focused programs rather than the more disruptive behaviors some young offenders fall into. That often meant spending time with women decades older than her who had been incarcerated for far longer.

“Everybody’s older than me,” she said. “I’m always the youngest by like 20 years.”

Watching some of those women grow old in prison, without guaranteed release even after parole hearings, made her question her own future.

“I look at older women in here and especially like older women who do the same things I do,” she said. “Because one day, they could be me or I could be them. Having a life sentence, I know that my way home isn’t promised.”

For a long time, Coleman resisted psychiatric medication, worried it might undermine her hard-earned sobriety. She leaned instead on exercise, yoga, peer support and her faith.

In October 2023, she was transferred to the lower-security California Institution for Women in Chino, which offered more programming and a calmer environment. She began teaching yoga, took a leadership role in AA meetings, and joined Responsibly Driven, a curriculum designed to help DUI offenders understand and change the decision-making patterns that led to their crimes.

She also took on a vocational training assignment in audio-video production, joined the prison newsletter team and was appointed to the Inmate Advisory Council. Still, she continued to wrestle with anxiety.

Sabrina Limon, who has been incarcerated since 2016, befriended Coleman early on, bonding over their shared commitment to sobriety and the 12 steps.

“You could see her anxiety just all over her face and body language,” Limon said. “It just looked like she was searching to find like, ‘What am I supposed to be doing? Where do I go?’ And you could really really see that anxiety on her.”

Limon, 46, said she had long avoided mental health treatment herself, wary of rumors that it could hurt her standing with the parole board.

California Institution for Women eventually opened an onsite guidance center, making counseling more accessible without requiring inmates to be formally classified as psychiatric patients. The open approach made it easier for Coleman to seek help, and she eventually agreed to try antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication under psychiatric supervision — something she once thought conflicted with her sobriety.

“Anxiety is a part of like my daily life,” Coleman said. “It’s something that I ignored for a very long time and why I turned to alcoholism and smoking weed in the first place, so I think acknowledging my anxiety today is really important.”

Watching Coleman work through therapy inspired Limon to seek treatment of her own.

“I’ve seen such a change in Grace as far as her anxiety goes and really working on her mental health one-on-one with a therapist,” Limon said. “I decided I’m gonna go check it out for myself. And sure enough, thanks to Grace, now I have a therapist. It’s wonderful. It’s helping me so much.”

Because she was 22 when she committed her crime, Coleman qualifies as a youth offender under California law, making her eligible for a parole hearing in 2033. What happens between now and then, she said, will shape how the board views her.

“Rehabilitation isn’t presented to us on a silver platter or silver bunk beds,” Coleman said. “It’s something that we actively work for.”

She runs laps on the prison’s rec yard even when Chino’s summer heat climbs past 90 degrees, though she says her yoga mat remains her most reliable refuge. Drugs still circulate through most prison populations, and staying clear of that world requires constant vigilance.

Coleman lives in a housing unit built around a code of personal accountability, home to the prison’s Puppy Program, where residents train rescue dogs to become service animals. Participants must remain free of disciplinary violations and agree to regular drug testing.

“You see a lot of people who want to start doing better and who want to be in like a better living environment to stay sober,” she said. “They come over here so that they feel like they have a positive support system to get out of the mix.”

Coleman keeps herself occupied through outside partnerships as well. She shares her story through UCLA’s Sentencing Project, writes poetry through the nonprofit Poetic Justice, and participates in restorative justice discussions organized by ReEvolution, a group that brings formerly incarcerated mentors into the prison to talk about the cycles of harm — both experienced and caused.

Barbara Van Sickle, ReEvolution’s executive director, has worked with Coleman in group settings for some time.

“I’ve seen her get to a place where she’s living in responsibility, accountability, and remorse, and not feeling that she can move forward,” Van Sickle said. “But I believe she’s working through that with a lot of introspection and is beginning to find her value again.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Behind Bars at 22: One Woman’s Journey to Understand a Fatal Mistake appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

He climbed into his Peterbilt, put on his headset, joined the conversation, and settled in for what would become hours of talk with friends scattered across the globe.

Singh, an Indian American trucker who has built something of a social media following, spends at least eight hours a day on the phone while hauling freight, six days a week. He calls it his “empathy call” — a ritual that keeps his spirits up and, just as importantly, keeps him alert behind the wheel.

It’s a habit shared by countless drivers across California and beyond, who dial into conversations that stretch across continents and time zones, forming a kind of rolling community that travels with them down the highway.

Drivers say the calls are a lifeline for their mental health in a profession defined by long stretches alone, sitting for hours with little chance to move or socialize.

“Truckers in the U.S. deal with a lot of stress,” Singh said. “I think long calls are an effective way to reduce that stress, that isolation, that loneliness in the cab — by letting people share what they’re feeling.”

Of course, using a handheld phone while driving is illegal in California, and drivers say they make sure to keep one ear free in their headsets to stay within the law. They also know the dangers of distracted driving all too well, and several told CalMatters they end their calls the moment traffic gets heavy.

The stakes are high every time a driver takes the wheel of a 36-ton rig — for road safety and for a commercial driver’s license that isn’t easy to win back if something goes wrong. The California Department of Motor Vehicles screens drivers’ physical and mental health during license renewals, and licenses can be suspended over health concerns.

Yet the state has never conducted a comprehensive study on truckers’ mental health, nor does it offer a rehabilitation program for drivers struggling with it. If a mental health issue comes to the state’s attention, drivers are largely left to fight for their license renewal on their own, often needing to hire an attorney.

Lindsey Bryan, health and wellness manager for Project 61, a nonprofit focused on trucker health, said isolation is a daily reality for drivers. “We see drivers dealing with social isolation every day,” Bryan said. “They’re away from their loved ones, and on top of that, they don’t have access to a lot of the things you and I use to manage stress.”

Academic researchers have found that the loneliness truckers experience sets them apart from other workers when it comes to how they use social media and digital communication. A 2016 study, “Work Strain, Social Isolation and Mental Health of Long-Haul Truckers,” noted that social media use has generally been linked to feelings of isolation among internet users.

For truckers, though, the opposite tends to be true. Platforms like WhatsApp and FaceTime give them a sense of community rather than isolation while they’re on the road.

“These opportunities would provide truck drivers the social connections they need during layovers, while waiting to load or unload their trucks, during any other non-driving period, or during emergencies,” the study’s authors wrote.

Until She Starts Snoring

The calls might look like a distraction from the outside, but many drivers insist they actually help keep them focused.

“The reason I still talk on my cellphone in the car today, hands-free or Bluetooth, is that it keeps me alert,” said Joseph Rajkovacz, a retired executive with the Western States Trucking Association. “It’s like turning on the radio and singing along to a song you like. Doesn’t matter if nobody wants to hear you sing — it still helps you stay sharp.”

That’s why Gerald Bailey, 53, says he spends 27 hours a week on the phone with his wife and siblings, chatting at all hours of the day and night. It’s become part of his routine every time he gets behind the wheel.

Earlier this summer, he was on the phone with his wife at a truck stop in Lodi while waiting for a mechanic to fix his rig’s air conditioning.

“I talk to my wife on the phone until she starts snoring,” Bailey said with a smile. “Then I let her rest — she’s earned it, and I don’t want to bother her.”

Not every driver has that freedom, though. Some companies prohibit phone use while driving altogether and monitor cabs with cameras.

“It’s against company policy,” said Peter Andrews, 62, a trucker from Texas, walking through a truck stop near Sacramento. “I have to stop the truck to call anyone. They’ve got AI cameras pointed right at my face, so I can’t touch the phone.”

Health Risks on the Road

According to Project 61 data, 70% of truckers in the United States are obese — double the rate among American workers generally. Truckers also experience heart disease and depression at twice the national average, and diabetes at twice the rate of the general population.

Raman Dhillon, executive director of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, knows those risks firsthand. Years behind the wheel led to weight gain, and eventually diagnoses of diabetes and high blood pressure.

Truckers are “out there on the road. They’re isolated in that 3-by-3-meter cab, and the loneliness in that moment is intense,” Dhillon said. “You’ve got 11 hours of driving, three hours of rest, 10 hours of sleep — it’s a constant cycle. I think a lot of drivers cope with that through phone calls.”

Singh sees the physical health risks as closely tied to psychological isolation. He said drivers tend to feel more disconnected when they’re eating poorly on the road. That’s why his wife, Harjinder Kaur, a nurse, prepares two or three home-cooked Indian curries along with whole wheat bread for him to take on deliveries.

Truckers also describe facing discrimination that complicates their travels, including businesses refusing to let them use restrooms. The issue reached Congress last year, when a Republican lawmaker introduced legislation that would require retailers and warehouses to give truckers restroom access. The bill has stalled.

“They won’t let us use the bathrooms,” said Brenda Johnson, 58, who drives a route from Oregon with her husband. “There’s no infrastructure for us. And these companies we’re delivering to treat us like we’re less than human.”

Exercise poses its own challenge. “We really don’t have anywhere safe to work out,” Johnson said at a truck stop near Interstate 80 in Sacramento. “You want to walk around a parking lot with trucks coming in and out? You’re dodging everything. There’s just no safe place to move around.”

Fighting Loneliness

Even constant company hasn’t erased Johnson’s loneliness. “Even though my husband rides with me and is right there beside me, I can feel lonely and not lonely at the same time,” said Johnson, who has been driving since 2005. “Since we’re together all the time, we don’t really have much to talk about.”

Instead, Johnson leans on two friends in the trucking industry and a handful of close relatives. On an average day, she spends about an hour on the phone outside of work-related calls, though that number can swing widely depending on her mood.

“When I’m in a good headspace, my five hours a week can turn into almost 25,” Johnson said. “But when I’m down, I isolate myself. I don’t want to talk to anybody. I just don’t want to deal with anything.”

José Martínez, 50, a long-haul driver resting at a truck stop near Stockton, described a similar rhythm. He has wrestled with guilt over missing time with his family while working, and now calls relatives or friends whenever loneliness creeps in during a 10-hour shift.

“It’s basically constant, and talking to people is a good thing,” Martínez said.

Talking Through Emergencies

For immigrant drivers, cellphone calls offer an instant connection to their home countries that simply wasn’t possible in the era of CB radio.

The American trucking industry has long relied on immigrant labor. Between 2000 and 2021, the number of foreign-born truckers more than doubled, growing from 316,000 to more than 720,000 drivers. Today, roughly 18% of U.S. truckers are foreign-born. According to the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, nearly 35% of Punjabi Indian truckers contribute to California’s trucking industry.

Singh, the Fresno driver, moonlights as the host of a weekly television program covering Punjab politics. He’s also writing a book titled “Ameriki Trucknama” — roughly, “The American Trucking Saga” — and has built a following of 19,000 on Facebook, where people turn to him for political commentary.

Driving toward Kansas City earlier this summer, fellow Punjabi drivers asked for his take on the outcome of upcoming legislative elections in Punjab, the northern Indian state many of them call home.

Back on the highway, Singh points to more tangible benefits of these long calls — like helping drivers manage emergencies far from home.

Two years ago, he was on the phone with a friend when the man’s fuel line burst somewhere in rural Texas. Panicked, Singh stayed on the line while his friend searched for a local mechanic.

“If I hadn’t been on that call, who knows what would have happened,” Singh said.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Why Truckers Seem to Always Be on the Phone While Driving on the Freeway appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

A recent CalMatters report by Gagandeep Singh dug into why phone calls have become such a fixture of life on the road for truckers, who often spend long stretches, day and night, hauling freight across the state and country with little human contact and few chances to unwind.

Piloting an 80,000-pound truck alone for hours at a time takes a toll. Drivers say there’s rarely time or opportunity to exercise, and the isolation can wear on a person. Phone calls to spouses, family members and other truckers, they say, offer a rare outlet.

Gerald Bailey, one of the drivers interviewed for the report, said he spends about 27 hours a week on the phone, mostly talking with his wife and brothers. During a stop earlier this summer at a truck stop in Lodi, he was on the line with his wife, as he often is late into the evening.

“I stay on the phone with my wife until she starts snoring,” Bailey said.

Lindsey Bryan, a health and wellness manager at a nonprofit that focuses on truckers’ well-being, said drivers are frequently separated from loved ones for long periods and lack many of the everyday outlets other workers use to manage stress. California has never conducted a statewide study specifically examining truck drivers’ mental health, and the state has no formal program to help truckers who may be struggling.

For some drivers, a simple phone call is one of the few comforts available. But not everyone on the road has that option. Peter Andrews, a trucker from Texas who was passing through a truck stop near Sacramento, said his company strictly bans phone use while driving.

“I have to pull over the truck to call someone,” Andrews said. “They’ve put camera equipment with artificial intelligence right on my face, so I can’t use my phone.”

The story is part of CalMatters’ ongoing coverage of mental health issues facing California workers.

In other news from around the state:

The race for California’s next insurance commissioner might seem far removed from the concerns of renters, but the outcome could hit close to home for millions of Californians who don’t own property. Renters make up about 44% of the state’s population, and the condition of California’s property insurance market directly shapes what they pay in rent, how much housing is available and how quickly neighborhoods can bounce back after disasters, according to CalMatters reporter Levi Sumagaysay.

Gil Barel learned that firsthand after last year’s Eaton Fire tore through parts of Southern California. Her apartment complex in Pasadena wasn’t destroyed, but smoke seeped into the building for days afterward. A test she paid for herself turned up toxic contaminants, though she’s still waiting on additional results. Her landlord arranged for a cleaning in March, but Barel says it fell short of what was needed.

“The issue is that I have no control,” Barel said. “It really depends on the conversation between my landlord and their insurance company. If the landlord does the minimum, or if they don’t feel the need to fight or be insistent on certain things, then it’s not going to happen.”

Meanwhile, state lawmakers are moving to place new restrictions on the growing use of artificial intelligence chatbots for mental health support, according to CalMatters health reporter Ana B. Ibarra. An Assembly bill would bar companies from marketing chatbots as a form of therapy, prohibit AI systems from making therapeutic decisions without oversight from a licensed professional, and require providers to obtain a patient’s consent before recording therapy sessions using AI tools.

State Sen. Steve Padilla, a Chula Vista Democrat who authored the bill, said lawmakers are grappling with technology that’s evolving faster than regulators can keep pace with.

“We’re dealing with a new impactful technology that is unfolding and is deployed in our world at light speed, and so it is both extremely powerful and consequential,” Padilla said.

Business groups including the California Chamber of Commerce and TechNet oppose the measure, arguing it would stifle innovation and limit the potential benefits AI could offer.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Truckers and Cellphone Use Behind the Wheel: What’s Behind the Habit? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Singh, a Fresno-based trucker with a following on social media, spends roughly eight hours a day on the phone while hauling freight, six days a week. He calls it a “call of empathy” — a practice he credits with keeping him alert behind the wheel and lifting his spirits during long, solitary stretches on the road.

He’s far from alone. Across California and beyond, truckers are increasingly turning their cabs into rolling phone booths, connecting with friends, family and fellow drivers scattered across continents and time zones. For many, it’s become an essential coping mechanism in a profession defined by isolation, long hours and limited access to basic comforts like exercise or even a bathroom.

“There is a lot of stress on truck drivers in the United States,” Singh said. “I think the long call is a meaningful method that can reduce this level of stress, social isolation or loneliness in the truck by sharing feelings with others.”

Drivers are careful to note that talking on the phone while driving is illegal in California unless done hands-free, and most keep one ear uncovered to stay within the law. They also acknowledge the risks: several told CalMatters they end calls the moment traffic gets heavy. The stakes are real — losing control of an 80,000-pound rig, endangering others on the highway, or jeopardizing a commercial license that isn’t easy to win back. The California Department of Motor Vehicles reviews drivers’ physical and mental fitness during license renewals and can suspend those who fall short.

Despite the scale of the trucking industry in California, the state has never conducted a comprehensive study on truckers’ mental health, nor does it offer a formal path to rehabilitation for drivers facing psychological struggles. If a mental health issue draws the state’s attention, drivers are largely left to hire their own attorneys and fight to keep their licenses.

Lindsey Bryan, health and wellness manager at Project 61, a nonprofit focused on trucker health, said isolation is a daily reality for the profession. “We see that drivers face social isolation daily,” Bryan said. “They’re away from their loved ones, and also lacking many of the things that you and I might do on a day-to-day basis that help us reduce our stress.”

Researchers have found that truckers experience social media differently than most people. A 2016 study, “Work Strain, Social Isolation and Mental Health of Long-Haul Truckers,” noted that heavy social media use is often tied to feelings of isolation among the general public. For truckers, though, platforms like WhatsApp and FaceTime tend to do the opposite — providing a sense of community during otherwise solitary hours. The study’s authors wrote that these tools offer drivers “much-needed social connections during layovers, while waiting to load/unload their trucks… or during emergencies.”

Talking on the phone, many drivers say, doesn’t distract them — it keeps them sharp. “The reason, even in my car today, I talk on my cell phone, via hands-free or bluetooth and it keeps you alert,” said Joseph Rajkovacz, a retired executive with the Western States Trucking Association. “It’s no different than turning on your radio and singing along to a song you like… So it does help keep you alert, too.”

Gerald Bailey, 53, said he logs about 27 hours a week on the phone with his wife and brothers. Parked at a truck stop in Lodi this summer while waiting on a mechanic to fix his air conditioning, Bailey described his nightly routine with a laugh: “I stay on the phone with my wife until she starts snoring. Then I let her have a well-deserved sleep and I don’t want to disturb her.”

Not every driver has that freedom. Some trucking companies bar phone use entirely and monitor cabs with AI-equipped cameras. “It’s against company policy,” said Peter Andrews, 62, of Texas, at a truck stop near Sacramento. “I have to pull over the truck to call someone. They’ve put camera equipment with artificial intelligence right on my face, so I can’t use my phone.”

The isolation takes a physical toll as well. According to Project 61, 70% of U.S. truck drivers are obese — roughly double the rate among American workers generally. Truckers also face heart disease and depression at twice the national average, and diabetes at twice the rate of the general population.

Raman Dhillon, chief executive officer of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, has lived that reality. During his years driving, he gained weight and was later diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure. “They are quarantining in that 10-by-10 cab, and loneliness at that time is intense,” Dhillon said. “You have 11 hours of driving, three hours of break, and 10 hours of sleep, and it’s constantly going on. I think a lot of drivers cope with this through phone calls.”

Singh sees a direct link between poor diet and mental strain on the road. To combat it, his wife, Harjinder Kaur, a nurse, packs him homemade Indian curries and wheat breads for his trips.

Beyond loneliness, truckers describe facing what they call outright disrespect from businesses that refuse them restroom access. The issue reached Congress last year, when a Republican lawmaker introduced legislation requiring retailers and warehouses to grant truckers bathroom access. The bill has stalled.

“They don’t allow us to use restrooms,” said Brenda Johnson, 58, an Oregon-based driver who works alongside her husband. “There’s no structure. And these companies where we deliver treat us as less than human.”

Exercise poses its own challenge. “We don’t really have any safe place to exercise,” Johnson said at a truck stop near Interstate 80 in Sacramento. “Do you want to walk around a parking lot with trucks going in and out? You’re dodging all kinds of things. There’s no real safe place for exercise.”

Even sharing a cab with her husband hasn’t erased her sense of solitude. “Even though my husband rides with me and is constantly with me, I can still be alone and not be alone,” said Johnson, who has driven since 2005. “Because we’re together all the time, we don’t really have anything to talk about.” Instead, she leans on two close friends in the industry and a handful of family members, spending anywhere from five to 25 hours a week on personal calls depending on her mood. “When I’m depressed, though, I isolate myself,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to anybody. I just don’t want to deal with anything.”

Jose Martinez, 50, a long-haul driver resting at a truck stop near Stockton, described a similar pattern, saying he often feels guilty about time away from his family. Now he calls loved ones whenever loneliness creeps in during his 10-hour shifts. “It’s basically the whole time, and it’s a positive thing to talk to people,” he said.

For immigrant drivers in particular, cellphones offer a connection to home that didn’t exist in the era of CB radios. Foreign-born truckers have become an increasingly vital part of the industry — their numbers more than doubled nationally between 2000 and 2021, climbing from 316,000 to over 720,000. Today, about 18% of U.S. truckers were born outside the country. According to the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, nearly 35% of California’s trucking workforce is made up of Punjabi drivers of Indian origin.

Singh, who also hosts a weekly television program on Punjab politics and is writing a book titled “Ameriki Trucknama” — “American Truck Saga” — has built a following of 19,000 on Facebook, where fans seek out his political commentary. On a recent drive to Kansas City, fellow Punjabi truckers peppered him with questions about upcoming legislative elections back home.

Beyond companionship, Singh said the calls have proven lifesaving in emergencies. Two years ago, he was on the phone with a friend when the man’s truck suffered a burst fuel line in rural Texas. Singh stayed on the line as his friend scrambled to find a mechanic nearby. “Eventually, if he had not been on the call, we don’t know what would have happened,” Singh said.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Truckers and Cellphone Use: What’s Really Going On Behind the Wheel appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Ask it about anxiety or sadness, and it responds with reassurance, follow-up questions and even scripted stage directions such as “The psychologist’s expression softens with compassion.” A small disclaimer at the bottom notes: “This is A.I. and not a real person. Treat everything it says as fiction.”

That fine print hasn’t stopped a growing number of people — including, by some estimates, one in eight teens and young adults — from turning to chatbots for emotional support and mental health advice. Now California lawmakers are trying to catch up with a technology that’s evolving faster than the rules meant to govern it.

A new bill moving through Sacramento would place fresh restrictions on AI companion chatbots and other automated tools people use for mental health support, whether as a supplement to therapy or in place of it entirely.

State Sen. Steve Padilla, a San Diego Democrat who authored the measure, said his goal is to draw a clear boundary: artificial intelligence can help with paperwork and support licensed clinicians, but it should not be allowed to act as a therapist.

“We’re dealing with a new impactful technology that is unfolding and is deployed in our world at light speed, and so it is both extremely powerful and consequential,” Padilla said.

The push has gained momentum amid a string of wrongful death lawsuits — several filed in California federal courts — accusing chatbot developers of playing a role in users’ suicides.

Padilla’s bill, Senate Bill 903, would bar companies from marketing chatbots as therapy substitutes. It would also prohibit AI systems from making therapeutic decisions without oversight from a licensed clinician, and it would require health providers to disclose — and get patient consent for — any use of AI to record therapy sessions or help triage mental health cases.

Balancing protection and innovation

The bill has drawn support from professional groups representing psychologists, therapists and counselors, along with the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which has been sounding alarms about the unchecked rollout of AI tools in behavioral health settings. The union recently filed a complaint with state regulators accusing Kaiser Permanente of using an automated algorithm to triage mental health patients.

Supporters say the bill isn’t just about shielding consumers from unreliable chatbot advice — it’s also about preserving the role of trained professionals in a field increasingly influenced by automation.

Le Ondra Clark Harvey, chief executive of the California Behavioral Health Association, told lawmakers that without stronger safeguards, chatbots risk giving inaccurate guidance or mishandling a mental health crisis. “The difference between a licensed clinician and an automated response is not technical. It can be life altering,” she said.

Opponents, meanwhile, worry the bill goes too far in restricting AI’s role in clinical settings. TechNet, a trade group representing technology companies, argues the legislation could choke off promising uses of AI in healthcare. Robert Boykin, the group’s executive director for California, said the bill risks slowing down tools that could otherwise expand access to care.

“At a time when every county in California faces a shortage of behavioral healthcare workers, SB 903 still puts a clinician bottleneck in front of the intake and screening tools that help patients reach care faster,” Boykin said in a written statement.

The bill is now awaiting a vote in the Assembly’s fiscal committee.

A booming, informal form of ‘therapy’

Millions of people use AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Character.ai every day for research, work and everyday problem-solving. But over the past two years, the most common use has shifted toward companionship and informal “therapy,” according to recent research.

Experts point to rising loneliness — particularly among young people — combined with the high cost and limited availability of professional mental healthcare, even as diagnoses of anxiety and depression climb.

People often turn to chatbots “because they have unmet needs,” said Dr. Jodi Halpern, a professor of bioethics and medical humanities at UC Berkeley. But she warns that once users begin relying on chatbots for emotional support, they are dealing with companies whose business models are built around maximizing engagement — sometimes “including by manipulative tactics” such as excessive praise or validation.

Unlike traditional therapy, most chatbots are free, available around the clock, and require no insurance paperwork — a combination that makes them attractive to many. But they operate without any oversight from licensed professionals. Beyond general-purpose chatbots, a wave of AI-powered mental health apps has also emerged, often marketed as “pocket therapists” or “AI coaches” and sold through paid subscriptions.

Organizations such as the American Psychological Association caution that chatbots are not a substitute for real therapy. Trained clinicians pick up on subtle cues — tone of voice, eye contact, body language — that AI simply cannot detect. That gap becomes especially dangerous when users share thoughts of self-harm or suicide, situations chatbots are not equipped to safely manage.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, disclosed last fall that roughly 1.2 million users a week share thoughts of suicide with the chatbot. The company says it responds by encouraging users to seek professional help and directing them to resources like the 988 crisis line. Still, several families who have filed wrongful death lawsuits against OpenAI and other AI companies allege that chatbots engaged with their loved ones’ suicide plans rather than intervening.

Those lawsuits have added urgency to the legislative debate nationwide. Illinois became the first state to ban the use of AI in therapy services last year, and a handful of other states have since enacted similar restrictions.

Where the lines blur

One of the trickier questions surrounding SB 903 is determining exactly which tools would fall under its restrictions.

The union’s complaint against Kaiser centers on an e-visit screening tool used to evaluate patients who suspect they may be dealing with anxiety or depression. According to the complaint, patients fill out a multiple-choice questionnaire, and the system “automatically and instantaneously generates care recommendations and referral pathways based on the responses provided.”

The union argues that the speed of these automated recommendations makes it unlikely that a licensed clinician is actually reviewing each patient’s responses — a practice it says endangers patients and may violate state law.

Whether SB 903 would apply to Kaiser’s e-visit tool remains unclear.

“That tool is in a black box. Kaiser is not sharing with us or others about exactly how it works and exactly what it does,” said Benjamin Eichert, the union’s director of public policy.

Kaiser, responding to the complaint, told CalMatters that its e-visit tool “does not use AI to diagnose patients, make clinical decisions, or determine medical necessity.”

Eichert said Kaiser is far from alone — many behavioral health providers already advertise using AI during patient intake and triage, a practice he believes would be covered by SB 903’s disclosure requirements.

“That intake process, that triage and screening process, is where implementation (of AI) has happened fastest,” Eichert said. “That’s why those provisions were proposed because it’s an area where this technology is already being used without guardrails.”

For the union, the Kaiser complaint and the push for SB 903 represent two parallel efforts aimed at the same outcome: ensuring human clinicians remain central to mental healthcare, even as algorithms take on a growing share of the work. State regulators are currently reviewing the union’s complaint against Kaiser.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Lawmakers Push to Rein In AI ‘Therapists’ Amid Growing Concerns Over Mental Health Advice appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

CARE Court, formally known as the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act, lets family members, first responders and others petition a judge to connect someone suffering from a serious untreated mental illness — conditions like schizophrenia — with a voluntary community-based treatment plan. If that voluntary arrangement doesn’t hold, a judge has the authority to order the person into treatment.

L.A. County launched its program in December 2023, but for much of its existence it has fallen well short of the caseload state officials originally predicted. Between December 2023 and June of this year, only 1,111 petitions were filed countywide — a fraction of the roughly 3,800 cases per year that state projections had anticipated.

That trend appears to be shifting. County officials say petitions climbed by about 85% between November and March, with 68 filed in March alone.

Martin Jones, a program manager with the county’s Department of Mental Health, credits the uptick to closer coordination with hospitals, first responders and other agencies that can identify and refer people who might benefit from the program.

“We’re doing quite a bit of work to put tools in their hands to also help them identify and refer folks to us who might benefit from the support,” Jones told LAist. “I think we’re approaching the project from several fronts, and we’re seeing the results of that.”

Jones also pointed to a change that took effect in January, which expanded the program’s diagnostic criteria to include people with bipolar I disorder accompanied by psychotic features. That broader eligibility, he said, has contributed to the recent surge in filings.

Supporters of CARE Court, a priority initiative for Newsom, argue it offers a more structured but less restrictive path toward stabilizing people with severe mental illness, and they view the rise in petitions as evidence the program is finally catching on.

Not everyone is convinced the growth is meaningful. Some mental health advocates and civil liberties groups say the numbers obscure a lack of real progress.

“The number of petitions says nothing about outcomes, which is the real point of the program,” said Eve Garrow, a policy analyst with the ACLU of Southern California. “Positive outcomes are really minuscule compared to the population in need.”

Statewide data show roughly half of all CARE Court petitions are ultimately dismissed. County officials counter that more than 4,000 people across California have instead been connected to alternative county mental health services when a formal CARE agreement wasn’t the right fit.

Critics, including Garrow, have also raised concerns about cost. A review by the Assembly Committee on the Judiciary found that in fiscal year 2024, the roughly 100 people enrolled in CARE Court statewide cost an average of about $713,000 per participant.

Garrow argues the program sidesteps the deeper issue — a chronically underfunded mental and behavioral health system.

“Basically what it does is it slaps a court order onto a broken system instead of fixing the system,” she said.

As for outcomes in L.A. County specifically, the Department of Mental Health reports that through June, 21 participants had completed the program’s 12-month track, with four more expected to graduate within the coming year. The department also noted that 63% of participants in the county have chosen to keep receiving CARE Court services rather than complete the program and exit.

Original source: CalMatters

The post L.A. County Officials Say Mental Illness Treatment Program Is Gaining Momentum appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Today, I am incarcerated at San Quentin for a gun-related crime. I serve as the chairman of Arms Down, the first gun offender rehabilitation program of its kind, developed inside prison to address gun violence through accountability, education and healing. I also serve as a program co-lead for Back to the Start, a nonprofit organization that helps incarcerated participants to process their childhood experiences and advocate for upstream solutions to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma and incarceration.

Over years of facilitating these programs, I have found one truth impossible to ignore: Nearly every person I have worked with who committed a gun offense had first experienced firearm-related trauma. Many witnessed shootings as children. Some lost parents, siblings or friends to homicide. Others grew up in neighborhoods where hearing gunfire was normalized, without being old enough to comprehend the danger. Trauma created wounds that, left untreated, began to fester and developed into destructive behaviors and unhealthy coping strategies to survive — strategies that were amplified through pain and tragedy.

I am fully accountable for my actions. These decisions forever changed my life and harmed others. Looking back, I recognize that the untreated trauma I carried contributed to my impulsive decisions. I often wonder how different my path would have been if someone had offered me counseling and support as a youth.

This is why Assembly Bill 2247, the Trauma, Healing and Resilience Investment for Victimized and Exposed Youth Act, known as the Thrive Act, matters.

As part of my amends to victims, I have an obligation to break cycles of gun violence, and that is what AB 2247 would do. This legislation would expand access to trauma recovery and support services for young survivors of gun violence. Specifically, it would provide funding for youth survivors and witnesses of gun violence; they would receive free, timely mental health and counseling services.

Annually, around 44,000 people die because of firearm-related injuries across the United States, up from 35,000 since the 1990s. In Alameda County, gun violence is the leading cause of death for young Black males. Suicide rates by firearm have doubled for Latino youth between 2014 and 2023. On average, every day, seven people between the ages of 1 and 17 die because of firearms.

These are not just numbers. These are people whose deaths leave behind children, siblings and communities shattered by their loss. It’s about time we did more through policy to address this epidemic affecting our state and nation. AB 2247 reaches children before they become statistics, before they become defendants, before another family loses a loved one and before another community experiences another shooting.

Public safety requires prevention, not only punishment. Too often, California responds only after someone has become a victim or an offender. AB 2247 recognizes that there is another path. When children who survive gun violence receive timely trauma care, they can begin to heal rather than to carry unaddressed trauma into adulthood. That is not just victim services — it’s crime prevention.

I have seen the power of that healing firsthand through Arms Down and Back to the Start. I have watched men cry for the first time in decades as they wrote about childhood trauma they had buried. I have participated in healing conversations between people who once believed violence was their only way to communicate. There are ways to interrupt the cycle, and we do not have to wait until more lives are damaged before we act.

Assemblymember Sade Elhawary, author of the Thrive Act, is championing legislation that gets at the root of the problem. This is the kind of support I wish had been available to me as a young person — and to so many of the men I have worked alongside. We cannot change our past, but we can work together to change what happens to the next generation through prevention and healing. If we wait until after more shots are fired, it is too late.

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The complaint, filed with state regulators by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, targets Kaiser’s online e-visit screening tool, which patients use when they believe they’re dealing with anxiety or depression. Patients answer a series of multiple-choice questions, and the system then generates care recommendations and referral pathways “automatically and instantly” based on those answers, according to the filing.

Those recommendations don’t necessarily lead to a session with an in-person therapist. The complaint states that patients may instead be directed toward virtual therapy, health education classes or self-guided wellness apps.

The union represents therapists, social workers and other clinicians employed at Kaiser facilities. The state’s Department of Managed Health Care says this marks the first time a union has filed a grievance against a health plan specifically over the alleged use of algorithms and artificial intelligence in mental health treatment decisions.

Union members say they have seen no proof that licensed mental health professionals review patients’ e-visit answers in real time — or at all — before the tool spits out follow-up care recommendations. At a hearing held last week by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors examining the issue, therapists and social workers testified that automated digital screenings cannot substitute for a trained clinician’s judgment.

“AI and algorithms don’t capture what trained humans can,” said Ilana Marcucci-Morris, a therapist and member of the union’s bargaining committee. She noted that people experiencing depression often downplay their symptoms, meaning a tool relying solely on self-reported answers could miss warning signs of a more serious condition.

Kaiser did not send a representative to last week’s hearing. But in a written statement emailed to CalMatters, the company pushed back on the union’s characterization of its mental health processes.

The e-visit tool “does not use artificial intelligence to diagnose patients, make clinical decisions, or determine medical necessity. Clinical decisions remain the responsibility of licensed health care professionals,” said Kaiser spokesperson Lena Howland. She did not provide additional details about the technology powering the tool.

Howland added that patients can still reach a live person by calling a phone number provided during the e-visit process. “The online assessment tool is an additional pathway to care, not the only one,” she said.

In a blog post published last year, Kaiser described the e-visit tool as increasingly popular, particularly among younger members, and said it’s available for roughly 30 different health concerns. The post stated that patient responses “are reviewed by a health care professional” and that members “receive a response by secure message within 4 hours, and often sooner.”

Union leaders counter that care recommendations often arrive almost instantly after a patient completes the questionnaire — far too quickly, they argue, for any clinician to have actually reviewed the responses.

The union contends Kaiser’s screening practice violates state law, which requires that medical decisions be made by a licensed health care professional and bars “artificial intelligence, algorithms or other software tools” from replacing that judgment.

The Department of Managed Health Care confirmed it received the union’s complaint and is looking into the matter. “Details of ongoing investigations are confidential, pursuant to law and to protect the integrity of the investigation,” the department said in a statement.

A Shift in Mental Health Triage

The complaint arrives amid stalled contract negotiations between the union and Kaiser Northern California, which have dragged on for more than a year without resolution.

Therapists and health workers who spoke at last week’s hearing said a new triage system, which includes the e-visit tool, was rolled out in 2023. Before that, Kaiser relied on specialized triage teams made up of licensed clinicians — professionals trained to pick up on cues like tone of voice — who gathered patient history over the phone, screened for self-harm risk, and offered preliminary diagnoses along with next steps for care.

Now, the union says, much of that case evaluation work has shifted to administrative staff or the digital tool itself. The union filed a separate complaint last year alleging that Kaiser was using call-center representatives, rather than clinicians, to field mental health-related calls.

Marcucci-Morris said she often doesn’t see patients until roughly two weeks after they’ve gone through Kaiser’s new screening system. “The severity and critical nature of the symptoms I’m seeing have increased significantly because the app, the AI, an algorithm or an unlicensed phone operator wrongly determined they could wait 10 days to see me,” she said.

San Francisco Supervisor Chyanne Chen said she called last week’s hearing after hearing concerns from constituents — both Kaiser employees and patients — about the health system’s mental health services. Kaiser provides coverage to roughly a third of San Francisco’s population.

Chen called Kaiser’s absence from the hearing “unacceptable,” saying it left many of her questions unanswered.

“As a San Francisco resident, I’m not against technology,” Chen said. “For me, this is about making sure we’re not compromising the quality of our care and safety.”

Kaiser’s Troubled Mental Health Record

This isn’t the first time Kaiser has skipped a hearing focused on its mental health services. Last year, state lawmakers criticized the health plan after it declined to participate in an informational hearing on its behavioral health programs.

Kaiser’s mental health struggles are well documented. In 2023, the company agreed to pay a $50 million fine and invest $150 million to improve its programs, settling state findings that mental health patients faced serious delays in care. In 2021, California regulators noted a rise in mental health-related complaints, prompting a survey that ultimately led to that settlement. Kaiser currently operates under a corrective action plan and must submit quarterly progress reports to the state.

Back in 2014, state regulators fined Kaiser $4 million over lengthy waits between therapy appointments. Kaiser has largely attributed its past troubles to a shortage of mental health professionals statewide.

The health plan is also facing growing scrutiny over its expanding use of artificial intelligence and digital tools across its broader operations.

Kaiser’s own mental health clinicians have pushed back against transcription tools used to record patient appointments, arguing the company hasn’t disclosed how that data is used or shared. Separately, call-center nurses have raised concerns about Kaiser’s use of AI and software to monitor their calls.

This coverage is supported by the California Health Care Foundation, which works to ensure people have access to the health care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford.

Original source: CalMatters

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