Councilmember Rick Cole’s “City Talk” Takes On a Humane Rethinking of Mental Health Care

The next installment of Pasadena Councilmember Rick Cole’s online series “City Talk” turns to a question many cities are struggling to answer: how to care, humanely and effectively, for residents in mental health crisis. The webinar streams Tuesday, July 7 at 7 p.m.

Cole will be joined by Kerry Morrison, founder of Heart Forward LA, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit dedicated to transforming the mental health system. Morrison spent 22 years leading a Hollywood business improvement district before a search for better answers took her to Trieste, Italy — a city the World Health Organization recognizes as a model for community-based mental health care. She has since championed what she calls radical hospitality, an approach that treats people living with serious mental illness as full members of a community rather than problems to be managed.

Together, the two plan to discuss more humane approaches to mental wellness, how neighbors can better support one another, and what meaningful change might look like locally. Cole, a former Pasadena mayor who returned to the City Council after a decades-long absence, has made systemic reform a theme of his current term, arguing that governments have eroded public trust by failing to solve entrenched problems.

The conversation is free and open to anyone who signs in online. For residents watching Pasadena wrestle with homelessness and mental illness on its own streets, it offers a look at a different framework — one drawn from abroad and adapted for Southern California.

Rick Cole’s “City Talk” webinar will take place online on Tuesday, July 7 at 7 p.m. The event is free; sign in to attend: https://us02web.zoom.us/s/83862664724?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#success