Imagine your child is having a psychiatric emergency. You'd probably head to the nearest hospital, but in California, four out of five counties don't have any hospital beds for kids. In Southern California and the Bay Area where most of those beds exist, they're almost always full.
The California Report's Elaine Korry has the second of three stories exploring the lack of acute mental health care in the state.
CORRECTION: From the California Report: Due to a reporting error in this story on children's mental health care, we misidentified John Muir Medical Center, Concord as the hospital where Maria Ramirez's granddaughter was first taken. In fact, she had been taken to a different facility. We regret the error.