From our first cohort, MindSite News covered the mental health challenges of children living in a post deportation reality. Jazmin Carino rocks her son, Carlos, at a park in Los Angeles. Her husband self-deported to Mexico City after five months in an ICE detention center in California’s Central Valley. Photo: Julie Leopo for MindSite News / CatchLight
Grantees will spotlight community-based responses to maternal mental health, youth climate anxiety, workplace neurodivergence, caregiving, and life after incarceration
SAN FRANCISCO, September 1, 2026 — CatchLight, the organization investing in the power of images to inform and connect, today announced the second round of grantees under the Mental Health Visual Desk. Eight newsrooms across eight states will receive funding and editorial support to produce solutions-focused visual journalism examining how people and communities across the country are responding to urgent mental health challenges.
Local newsrooms have the knowledge and community trust needed to tell powerful visual stories about mental health, but often lack the dedicated resources to pursue them. Through the Mental Health Visual Desk, the grantees will have the support they need to bring greater visibility to promising solutions taking shape across the country. By connecting newsrooms with funding, visual expertise, and a wider network of support, we are building a stronger ecosystem for visual journalism that helps communities better understand the issues shaping their lives.”
— Elodie Mailliet, CEO, CatchLight
Launched in 2025, the Mental Health Visual Desk is a three-year initiative supporting visual journalism that goes beyond documenting the nation’s mental health crisis to examine what is working, what still needs to change, and how communities are responding.
The first year focused on California, producing stories in partnership with local newsrooms and media organizations. These included an examination of the mental health toll on parents of adults with serious mental illness with Shasta Scout; a portrait of queer youth building their own support systems in a rural county with BenitoLink; an investigation into housing models for adults with severe mental illness with California Health Report; and an exploration of the fear and anxiety experienced by children in mixed-status immigrant families with MindSite News. Ongoing collaborations with The Marshall Project, CalMatters, and KQED were also part of the first year’s work.
This second round of newsroom grantees represents a nationwide expansion of the initiative. The selected newsrooms span eight states and include local nonprofit news organizations, public radio stations, and digital outlets with regional and national reach. Each newsroom will receive direct funding, visual editorial support, engagement guidance ,cross-publishing and training opportunities focused on solutions-oriented mental health reporting, visual journalism, and journalist safety and well-being.
Mental health is deeply intertwined with community, health, and our everyday lives. By supporting local newsrooms and photojournalists rooted in the communities they cover, this initiative seeks to deepen our understanding of the lived realities of mental health and expand how we see both its challenges and the promising models of care emerging across communities.”
— Jenny Stratton, Executive Editor, CatchLight.
The projects, which will start to publish before the end of the year, will explore maternal mental health, youth climate anxiety, neurodivergence in the workplace, caregiving, and the experiences of formerly incarcerated people. Several will center communities that have historically been overlooked or misrepresented in mental health coverage.
The selected projects are:
MICHIGAN: Planet Detroit will follow young people confronting climate anxiety in a community shaped by industrial pollution. Through Climate Cafés and participant-created photography, the project will explore how youth are processing their emotions together.
MINNESOTA: MinnPost will examine how Minnesota’s Youth Mental Health Corps is recruiting young people with lived experience of mental illness or substance use disorder to help address the state’s behavioral health workforce shortage.
NEBRASKA: Flatwater Free Press will investigate Nebraska’s shortage of maternal mental health providers, following a mother seeking care and a provider working to expand access in an underserved area.
MONTANA: Montana Free Press will examine the disproportionate incarceration of Native American women in the state and spotlight community-based efforts supporting mothers and families after incarceration.
LOUISIANA: Verite News will document a peer support group helping formerly incarcerated New Orleanians address Post-Incarceration Syndrome. Participants will use disposable cameras to tell their own stories.
MASSACHUSETTS: WBUR will use photography and illustration to explore pelvic floor therapy as an underreported form of support for maternal mental health and the barriers limiting access to it.
NATIONWIDE / CALIFORNIA: San Francisco Public Press in collaboration with first round grantee MindSite News will examine the mental health challenges neurodivergent people face at work and highlight approaches employers are using to create more supportive workplaces.
TEXAS: Fort Worth Report will document the often-invisible mental health toll experienced by family caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s and dementia, while highlighting community resources available to support them.
Founded in 2015, CatchLight is building the resilient ecosystem needed to support visual journalism. CatchLight Local is the nonprofit’s proven, scalable model that expands local newsrooms’ capacity by subsidizing full-time visual journalism positions and offering services, tools, and expertise. The CatchLight Mental Health Visual Desk is the organization’s first thematic desk.
• • • • • • • •
About CatchLight
CatchLight is a visual-first media organization that leverages the power of visual storytelling to inform, connect, and transform communities. We bring resources and organizations together to discover, develop and amplify visual storytellers at all levels. The organization invests in the future of visual storytelling through several innovative programs. CatchLight Local seeks to establish the long-term sustainability of visual journalism by working with partner newsrooms and community-based visual journalists to provide inclusive, in-depth, accurate, and locally contextualized information to the public. Annually, CatchLight Global provides three visionaries a fellowship which includes field grants to develop long-form storytelling projects, engage audiences, and continue their work as innovators and leaders defining the future of the field. CatchLight Live is the organization’s live programming, including its landmark Summit and the CatchLight Live tour: an immersive, multimedia event series that blends powerful photojournalism, live storytelling, and live music.
CatchLight is supported by philanthropic funders and partners who believe in the power of visual journalism to inform, connect, and strengthen communities including: Arnold Ventures, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, Enlight Foundation, The John S and James L Knight Foundation, Kresge Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Press Forward, Report for America, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and their education partner PhotoWings.
