Joaquin Palomino

Mar 28, 2025 | sfchronicle.com | Cynthia Dizikes |Joaquin Palomino

Calling the dangerous conditions in for-profit psychiatric hospitals an "emergency," California's top lawmaker on the state Senate Health Committee proposed legislation Thursday to quickly impose stricter staffing requirements in the facilities that treat tens of thousands of residents experiencing mental health crises every year. Sen.

Mar 19, 2025 | sfchronicle.com | Joaquin Palomino |Cynthia Dizikes

Five police officers barged into Santa Rosa Behavioral Healthcare Hospital with their guns at the ready. Inside the psychiatric hospital's adolescent unit on that Wednesday night in May 2023, patients were kicking, scratching and spitting on employees as staff members struggled to pin them down and quell the riot. A girl ripped a block of Sheetrock from the wall and hurled it at workers. The on-call hospital administrator was nowhere to be found.

Mar 5, 2025 | sfchronicle.com | Cynthia Dizikes |Joaquin Palomino

Soon after taking office in 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to finally fix a crisis that had come to define California. Emergency rooms were overflowing with people routed by depression, drug addiction and psychosis, many with unstable housing and nowhere to go except the streets.

Feb 26, 2025 | sfchronicle.com | Cynthia Dizikes |Joaquin Palomino

With California engulfed in a mental health crisis, the Chronicle set out to examine a critical and rapidly expanding part of the health care system: for-profit psychiatric hospitals.

Feb 26, 2025 | sfchronicle.com | Joaquin Palomino |Cynthia Dizikes

The sun had burned through the fog on a Saturday morning last April when residents of a hilltop neighborhood on the outskirts of San Francisco noticed a girl face down in a driveway. Her arms lay above her head. A black jacket hung off her body. At first, neighbors on the steep street of worn, pastel row homes thought she might be homeless and sleeping. But when they turned her over, she didn't move. Her skin was pale, her arms marked by scars. She had braces on her teeth.