LAT | R Pedroncelli/KFF Health
“It feels helpless, because there is more than you can fix,” said Nick Zepponi, a social worker at the Hill Country Community Clinic CARE Center in Redding. The mental health urgent care clinic is one of the last lines of defense in the fraying behavioral health system in Shasta County, where the suicide rate is more than double the state average and overdose deaths increased more than threefold during the pandemic. “There’s more people than you can help that need it,” Zepponi said.