Story
October 17, 2025
Watch: How Pennsylvania’s Mental Health System Failed Those Who Needed It Most
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Project
The Cost of Failing
One family’s torturous journey through the broken mental healthcare system in Pennsylvania, and how...
An ongoing two-year Spotlight PA investigation challenges some of the most common misconceptions about mental health treatment in Pennsylvania — most significantly that when people can’t or don’t get help, it’s their fault.
The investigation’s findings show that despite Pennsylvania’s public promises, the state has failed to build a viable community mental health system to help those with the most severe needs.
Because of that failure, many Pennsylvanians were driven into homelessness, unemployment, or incarceration.
This resulted from 30 years of choices by seven governors, hundreds of legislators, and countless local officials that continually pledged to provide better care, failed to do so, and knew what would happen if they didn’t.
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As part of its examination, the newsroom dug through thousands of pages of documents from 140 public records requests, pored over state and local spending data, and conducted interviews with dozens of current and former government officials, advocates, and people navigating the mental health system.
Partnering with the Lehigh Valley Justice Institute, Spotlight PA commissioned a first-of-its-kind analysis of mental health spending and services in all 67 counties that traces cuts down to the dollar and shows how many fewer people are served today than just a few years ago.
To spread the reach of this work, Spotlight PA produced broadcast-ready video segments of the investigation. The segments were created by Mitch Blacher, a veteran broadcast journalist, as part of a first-of-its-kind partnership with a group of Nexstar television stations.
