Our Mental Health Crisis is Evident Everywhere and We Need to Pay Attention
Exploring the Intersectionality of Mobility and Mental Health
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. As a person who is impacted by friends and family experiencing mental health crises, I’m acutely aware of its effect not only on families and individuals, but on our communities as a whole. I wanted to take the time to acknowledge the importance of this moment—and the urgency of what we are facing.
Content Warning: Please note that this post discusses mental health and mental health crises, including references to suicide. Please take care of yourself. If this content feels overwhelming, you are encouraged to pause. For resources and support, visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), including your local chapter such as NAMI Greater Los Angeles. If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide, you can contact the 988 Lifeline.
Every day when I step outside my door, I move through a dense intersection of vulnerability, wealth, mobility, survival, privilege, and stress—stress that America places on everyone, but especially on those with the least protection, the least margin, and the least access to care.
Downtown Los Angeles is not one story.
There are many stories layered on top of one another.
People with stable housing and people without it.
Young professionals and elders on fixed incomes.
Artists, service workers, families, immigrants, people living with untreated mental illness, people barely holding themselves together.
I witness bodies struggling to move with no clear destination—nervous systems overwhelmed, minds breaking down in public view—while those around them have adapted to moving through spaces defined by ongoing crisis.
You cannot live here and not see it.
You cannot live here and pretend it isn’t happening.
Moving through our cities is to witness the visible impact of trauma and decades of infrastructure neglect—conditions that have also deeply affected our human infrastructure, contributing to mental health challenges across our communities, particularly within Black and Brown communities. It means recognizing the lack of alternative forms of mobility available to those without support. It means seeing clearly how mobility intersects with mental health—and how our systems fail to support people experiencing mental illness.
The Daily Reality We Walk Past
What I experience daily is not simply “urban life.”
It is the visible outcome of decades of political neglect, underfunded social services, fragmented healthcare systems, and a cultural refusal to center care as a public good.
Within the mobility justice work I do, I observe, reflect, and seek to reimagine more restorative solutions. I witness people talking to themselves, moving through spaces in distress, pacing, withdrawn, or frozen in the absence of care—often stripped of the dignity and support every human being deserves.
I witness bodies struggling to move with no clear destination—nervous systems overwhelmed, minds breaking down in public view—while those around them have adapted to moving through spaces defined by ongoing crisis.
Young people fall through cracks widened by poverty, racism, stigma, and fear.
Police are asked to respond to mental health crises they are not equipped to resolve.
Communities absorb trauma after trauma with no time or space to heal.
This is not about morality.
This is not about personal failure.
This is about systems failing human beings.
We are living within a mental health state of emergency. This emergency does not belong only to individuals—it belongs to all of us.
Families are left alone to manage crises they are not trained or resourced to handle.
Over the past year, I have stood mostly alone in the midst of a young family member’s mental health crisis. I gave everything I had to keep them afloat, even as I walked a fragile edge myself—struggling not to collapse under the weight of grief, isolation, exhaustion, and shock.
Young people fall through cracks widened by poverty, racism, stigma, and fear.
Police are asked to respond to mental health crises they are not equipped to resolve.
Communities absorb trauma after trauma with no time or space to heal.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five adults and one in seven youth between the ages of 6–17 experience mental illness each year. About half of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14. Looking closer at Los Angeles, a 2024, USC and LA County Department of Public Health looking at data gathered in 2018 and 2020 found that the risk of depression grew in areas harder hit by COVID-19 during the pandemic, where there was much higher representation of BIPOC people. Surprisingly, though, the County found that since the pandemic, specifically between 2023 and 2025, Black Angelenos made significant gains in education and mental health. While this is heartening, it’s a “mixed reality” as their report states as the economic situation of Black Angelenos, especially compared to their White counterparts, has been impacted and puts education and mental health at risk.
These numbers confirm what we already see: this is a crisis and our systems are not equipped to handle it.
Where the System Breaks Down
The mobile psychiatric units that are supposedly dispatched during mental health crises are not designed to do the preventative, hands-on work that is urgently needed.
Families are often told they can only intervene if the person in crisis is actively attempting to harm themselves or others. Yet the very nature of mental illness means that a person may not understand what they are experiencing as they deteriorate—mentally and physically.
This makes no logical sense—and it helps no one. It allows the person suffering to spiral further.
It leaves families in shock, without guidance or support. And it results in communities confronting a growing number of unhealed—and dying—human beings.
Like many systemic issues, there is a profound disparity in access to care.
The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance reports that while mental health conditions occur at similar rates across populations, racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to receive care—and more likely to receive poor-quality or culturally incompetent care.
Black Americans experiencing serious mental health conditions—including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and psychosis—are disproportionately criminalized, undertreated due to lack of culturally sensitive screening and gatekeeping by the healthcare system, and overrepresented in jails and prisons compared to white Americans. Multiple studies have found that Black patients are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, while their emotional distress or mood disorders may be underrecognized or misinterpreted through racialized assumptions.
Similar to how mobility in the United States is often governed through surveillance and enforcement rather than equitable access, mental illness is frequently responded to through policing, incarceration, and crisis intervention systems instead of long-term care, housing, and community support.
Instead of creating systems that support justice-based movement, care, and healing, we criminalize the very people who need the most support—feeding cycles that disproportionately harm Black communities and other communities of color.
Something must change.
Care Must Start Earlier—and Be Built Differently
In many cases, the conditions go far beyond impersonal approaches to care. What is deeply troubling is that some facilities appear severely under-resourced, with staff themselves seeming unsupported, overwhelmed, and lacking the professional care, presentation, and stability needed for such sensitive work. Coupled with unsanitary and dehumanizing facility conditions, the overall environment can feel neglectful rather than restorative for people already experiencing profound vulnerability thereby reducing people in crisis to diagnoses and medications, often administered without continuity, relationship, or holistic understanding.
What we need is a holistic approach to mental health care that starts earlier and supports individuals and families across the full arc of their lives—before crisis, during crisis, and long after.
Because what I know, beyond the data, is this:
Mental health systems are not something we observe from a distance. These are realities people are forced to navigate—often alone, without a restorative roadmap, without intentional systems of care, and without the radical support structures necessary for human dignity, healing, and long-term stability, despite being told that help exists.
Over the past year, I have lived this reality as a person supporting a loved one through a mental health crisis. I will not share the details in order to protect their privacy, but I will say this: the gaps in our system are not theoretical. They are real, they are painful, and they are experienced in real time by families doing everything they can to hold their loved ones, and themselves, together.
And this is where mobility justice becomes inseparable from mental health.
Because when someone is in crisis, how they move, or whether they can move safely at all, matters.
It matters whether they can access care without fear, without policing, without barriers.
It matters whether our streets, transit systems, and public spaces are designed with dignity, care, and humanity.
Mobility justice is not just about getting from one place to another.
It is about whether Black and Brown people can live, breathe, move, and exist in public space with safety, dignity, care, and support; something this country has struggled to uphold since its founding
I have also experienced what meaningful, human-centered engagement can look like through my connection with Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell’s office and their Health & Wellness for LA efforts. Their work reflects a deep commitment to addressing mental health not only through policy, but through care, responsiveness, and a genuine understanding of the communities most impacted. This kind of leadership demonstrates that it is possible to center humanity, dignity, and compassion within systems that too often feel impersonal, inaccessible, and disconnected from the realities people are living through.
If we are serious about addressing the mental health crisis unfolding across Los Angeles and beyond, then we must move differently. We must build systems that meet people earlier, support families holistically, and treat care and mobility as essential, interconnected infrastructures.
The work coming out of Holly Mitchell’s office reflects a growing understanding that health is shaped far beyond hospitals or clinics. Recent initiatives like “Rewriting LA County’s Story”, a countywide anti-stigma and overdose prevention campaign, the County’s Medical Debt Relief Program, and the expansion of Neighborhood Medical Hubs all focus on addressing the root causes of poor health—such as economic instability, stigma, and lack of access to care. And of course, the Housing-First program that was written by Mitchell, who was then a state senator that prioritizes housing as essential to mental health or substance treatment and has since been adopted by LA County by way of the Homeless Services & Housing department. Together, these efforts prioritize meeting people where they are, especially in communities that have been historically under-resourced, and reframe health as something deeply connected to everyday life.
Lessons I’ve Learned Navigating the Mental Health System
As always, there are systems-based solutions, and we are deeply grateful for compassionate and resilient leaders like Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell and the many dedicated individuals working under her leadership who continue to lead with care, humanity, and vision. At the same time, we also want to acknowledge the deeply personal lessons I have had to learn and navigate with resilience throughout this journey as well.
First thing… breathe. Because when it first hits, it feels like everything is falling apart. It’s a shock. And in that moment, you really have to remind yourself—this is not the end of the world, even though it feels like it.
Acknowledge that you are operating in shock. I didn’t realize how much that impacts how you think, how you respond, the decisions you make. So give yourself some grace in the beginning.
Start right where you are. Don’t feel like you have to figure everything out. Just begin with what’s in front of you—what you can access, what you understand in that moment.
Talk to people who have actually lived this. Not just Googling or chatting with AI. Not just systems. Real people. Because of the lived experience… That’s where I got some of the most real guidance about what to do next.
Find local organizations in your community. That was a big one for me. What type of organizations exist to help and inform me? Who is already supporting people through this?
You are not alone. I found the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) through that process, and this is one of the most important lessons I learned from them. Countless individuals and families are navigating similar crises with loved ones, often quietly and without preparation. Hearing others openly share their experiences, fears, and challenges helped me better understand and cope with my own situation. If trainings and support groups are offered, take them — especially if you are supporting a loved one experiencing mental illness. Most of us are not prepared for the emotional, mental, and systemic realities that come with these situations. We need tools, education, community, and support — not just love — to navigate them with care, stability, and resilience.”
Find the space that feels aligned with you. For me, that meant finding a NAMI group that reflected my community—where I saw people who looked like me, who understood some of the cultural pressures and realities we’re dealing with. That mattered more than I expected.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to local government offices. As a community advocate I figured there had to be someone who could guide and direct me to resources, but who that source would be, I had no clue! It was recommended to reach out to Supervisor Mitchell’s Office which in turn also opened up access to someone focused on health and wellness who could actually guide me. And even when all the answers are not immediately available, their willingness to listen, respond, and help guide people toward meaningful support can make a critical difference.
Take care of yourself in the midst of all of this. I do not say that lightly. As I have resiliently shown up for my loved ones, I’ve also learned that caring for yourself is not a luxury; it is part of the survival and healing process. Walk. Ride your bike. Spend time outdoors. Stay connected to the people, practices, and moments that bring you even a small sense of grounding, peace, or clarity. Consider finding your own therapist or support system as well. Because supporting loved ones through crisis can slowly deplete your mind, body, and spirit if you are carrying it alone. Sustaining your own wellbeing is not selfish, it is necessary.
Supporting a loved one through serious mental health challenges is not a quick-fix situation. In many ways, it is like navigating a long-term illness or life-altering condition that requires ongoing care, patience, adaptability, and endurance. You begin to realize that sustainability matters— emotionally, physically, spiritually, and financially—because you are trying to show up for someone over time while also trying not to lose yourself in the process.
So…take it day by day. Some days are going to feel like progress. Some days are going to feel like you’re right back at the beginning.
Over time, you start to see the ecosystem. The therapists, the community organizations, the county, the support groups, your own practices… how all of it connects. And somehow, even in all the uncertainty, you find moments of grounding.
And I’ll be honest…there is grief in this. There is confusion. There is exhaustion. And all of that is real and deserves to be acknowledged with honesty, compassion, and without shame.
The level of care, coordination, and accountability we are asking for in all of this is what all of our communities deserve.
And this is also where joy must be reclaimed.
Because mobility justice is not only about reducing harm—it is about creating the conditions where people can experience freedom, connection, and moments of peace in their everyday lives. It is about ensuring that our streets, our neighborhoods, and our systems do not just respond to crises—but actively support wellbeing.
If we are serious about addressing the mental health crisis unfolding across Los Angeles and beyond, then we must move differently. We must build systems that meet people earlier, support families holistically, and treat care and mobility as essential, interconnected infrastructures.
Because every day we delay, we are not just failing systems.
We are failing family members, friends, and our communities.
And we cannot afford to look away any longer.