For Those With Severe Mental Illness, Treatment Options Are Often Lacking — But There Are Solutions

California Health Report by Victoria Clayton, April 30, 2026

For more than 20 years, Jessica Johnson lived on the streets of El Sobrante, Antioch and other cities in Contra Costa County. For a while, she slept behind a bank. Sometimes, she’d find respite in a park. But, for over half her life, she had no permanent home to speak of. As a teen, Johnson had become estranged from her family while she battled schizophrenia and substance use disorder.

Unhoused, Johnson, now 41, endured trauma and violence. There were times when she was found face down in the middle of a street or in some other disoriented state miles away in another county. She’d be detained by police or hospitalized. Under medical care, her condition stabilized, and over the years, she tried various housing options. But without adequate support services, Johnson’s mental health would inevitably deteriorate, and she’d return to the street where the dangerous cycle would begin again.

It’s a scenario that Bay Area mothers and mental health advocates Teresa Pasquini and Lauren Rettagliata have had a close seat to: With or without family support, people with the most severe mental illnesses often end up in the same place — living on the street, without health care, support or intervention. Both Pasquini and Rettagliata have adult sons with mental illnesses and have been stalwart National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) activists as well as members of the former Contra Costa County Mental Health Commission.

In 2019, though, they were acting on a mom impulse when a friend, who also has an adult child with a mental illness, was moving back to California and asked for a favor. The friend implored Pasquini and Rettagliata to check out Santa Ana’s John Henry Foundation, a long-term support home for adults living with schizophrenia. The women decided a road trip was in order. Pasquini and Rettagliata — as well as so many of the families they’ve connected with over the years — have lived through the terror of watching their adult kids stabilize and then repeatedly destabilize. Appropriate, supportive housing seemed elusive.

What they saw in Santa Ana, though, blew them away. “It was this protective oasis,” Pasquini said. The housing was not only pleasant, clean and comfortable, but there was 24-hour support, nutritious meals, assistance with medication compliance, therapy, skill building and social activities.

There are an estimated 11.5 million Americans (or nearly 5 percent of the population) living with a serious mental illness. Though many function well with medical treatment and help from family and friends, supportive housing offers options for those who need more care.

Read more from California Health Report here.