More than a million California children, youth, and adults receive services each year through California’s public mental health system, which includes services organized and provided through counties, Medi-Cal managed care plans, community-based organizations, jails and prisons, schools, and other entities. The system is profoundly complex and interacts with many other public systems.
The California Budget & Policy Center produced a chartbook that looks at this complex system, Mental Health in California: Understanding Prevalence, System Connections, Service Delivery, and Funding, with support from CHCF.
The chartbook includes information on prevalence of mental illness among California children, youth, and adults; an examination of children and youth in California’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems who often need mental health care; estimates of the number of adults with mental illness who are homeless or in the criminal justice system; and a look at how governance and funding is structured for the public mental health system.
The center also produced two related fact sheets:
Californians and Mental Health: What We Know About Poverty and Race
Many Californians in Prisons and Jails Have Mental Health Needs
Authors & Contributors
Adriana Ramos-Yamamoto
California Budget & Policy Center
Scott Graves
Scott Graves is director of research for the California Budget & Policy Center. He oversees the budget center’s analytical work, conducts research and analysis related to health and human services and corrections, and is the organization’s lead analyst on the state and county budget processes.
Scott received a bachelor’s degree in government and journalism from California State University, Sacramento, and a PhD in political science from the University of Texas at Austin.
