CatchLight Focus
Mental Health Visual Desk
Mental Health is a critical and complex issue that intersects with nearly every aspect of social life and public policy. Our first thematic visual desk illuminates mental health stories, challenges, and solutions.
About
Visual storytelling that brings mental health into focus
Mental health affects us all, yet many experiences and stories remain unseen, shaping our collective understanding of its impact.
In 2025, CatchLight launched its first issue-specific desk: a three-year visual reporting initiative focused on mental health. This collaborative effort produces multimedia reporting, resources and community engagement that illuminate the human experiences behind mental health, connecting them to policy, data, and emerging solutions—what’s working, what isn’t, and why it matters.
The initiative’s first year focused on California, following the state’s $6.4 billion investment in mental health programs statewide. Through in-depth visual storytelling and investigative reporting, the initiative examined how these funds are being used and what changes are actually taking place on the ground.
Now we are expanding this work nationally with a solutions-oriented lens, helping create a fuller picture of mental health experiences, challenges, and promising models of care.
What we are doing
Strengthening Representation
The mental health visual desk will produce multimedia projects inclusive of a broad range of experiences, with a focus on youth and young adults, mothers and caregivers, individuals impacted by the criminal justice system, and communities affected by climate displacement.
Better Understanding What’s Working and What Needs to Change
We’ll support visual reporting on current efforts, identify gaps, and amplify solutions by showcasing what’s working—whether it’s individuals, caregivers, or organizations in healthcare, government, philanthropy, and social sectors.
Engaging Communities and Building Collaborations
At the foundation of our work is fostering interdisciplinary and community collaborations throughout the reporting process, both as sources and first-person storytellers. Additionally, we’ll work closely with students, supporting a new generation of journalists engaged in mental health stories.
Featured projects
A Chance at Reinvention ↗
At California Medical Facility, playing wheelchair basketball helps men practice new ways of thinking and form bonds that remain outside of prison walls.
The Marshall Project
Nuestras Voce ↗
A module focused on visual storytelling related to youth mental health to develop emerging photographers and document their lived experiences in California’s Central Valley.
Filipino Advocates for Justice ↗
This Bay Area immigrant rights organization is helping Filipino caregivers care for themselves.
Echoes of Isolation ↗
A portrait series exploring the impacts of solitary confinement on justice-impacted individuals and communities.
New Age for Senior Center ↗
We wanted to find new friends: See how older Californians are proving that senior isolation isn’t inevitable.
Visualizing Teen Mental Health ↗
Youthbeat/CatchLight Workshop: Oakland students highlight caregivers through photography.
Stories from CatchLight
Stories from our partnership with
Stories with our local media partners
Opportunities
A second round of funding is now live
For this second cycle of the Mental Health Visual Desk, CatchLight is looking to support local newsrooms whose reporting efforts are helping reframe how mental health is seen, felt, and understood — and, crucially, what can be done about it.
Building on our first year of work across California, CatchLight is expanding this initiative nationally. We’ll award up to six grants to local newsrooms producing solutions-driven visual journalism on mental health. Both new and in-progress reporting projects are eligible. For examples of some of the past stories produced by newsroom grantees in collaboration with CatchLight, visit our list of stories.
Mental health is a critical and complex issue intersecting with nearly every aspect of social life and public policy. Visual journalism — through photography, illustration, video, data visualization, and design — can play a powerful role in illuminating these connections with nuance and empathy. This cycle, we’re especially interested in reporting that doesn’t just document the crisis, but examines possible solutions and what’s already working: the people, programs, and policies making a real difference in communities across the country.
Through this initiative, CatchLight aims to support visual storytelling that goes beyond statistics to reflect local community experiences, challenges, cultural context, and structural realities — with an eye toward community solutions.
We are seeking proposals from local newsrooms interested in producing visually-driven stories that explore mental health through a solutions lens, with particular interest in the following themes:
- Youth & Young Adults
- Climate Displacement
- Criminal Justice
- Maternal Health & Caregiving
This initiative offers both financial support and visual editorial guidance to help newsrooms deepen their coverage, enhance storytelling impact, leverage visuals for impactful community engagement and center the lived experiences of local communities, issues and perspectives often underrepresented in mainstream media.
What selected newsrooms receive
- $6,000 in direct funding to support staff reporters and visual journalists, provided in two equal payments: 50% at the start of the grant period, 50% upon completion of deliverables and submission of an impact/evaluation form.
- Visual commissioning support is available for newsrooms that do not have in-house photojournalists. In addition to your newsroom’s grant, CatchLight will be responsible for hiring, contracting, and reimbursing freelance photographers, in close coordination with your team.
- Editorial guidance and mentorship from experienced visual editors, engagement specialists and mental health-focused journalists
- Optional group training opportunities and resources on solutions-oriented mental health reporting, visual storytelling and journalist safety and well being.nswer to come.
Project scope and eligibility
We welcome proposals that:
- Focus on mental health as a central theme, not a peripheral issue
- Are designed to be visually driven, or include a strong visual storytelling component (e.g., photo essays, illustrations, video, data visualization, or mixed media)
- Approach the subject through a solutions lens — examining what’s working alongside what still needs to change
- Include a cross-publication plan, with the story published by your newsroom and made available through CatchLight and distribution partners
- Have a target publication date within the grant period (August 1 – December 1, 2026)
- Commit to submitting an impact form within six weeks of publication, outlining key outcomes and performance metrics
- Are aligned with one or more of the following thematic areas:
- Youth and Young Adults: Mental health challenges among teens and emerging adults; school and university pressures; access to care; identity formation
- Climate Displacement: Psychological toll of climate change, eco-anxiety, displacement due to climate disasters, and community adaptation
- Criminal Justice: Mental health inside jails/prisons, reentry challenges, diversion programs, mental health courts, and policing
- Motherhood: Postpartum mental health, intergenerational trauma, caregiving stress, mental health in immigrant or low-income mothers
Proposal requirements
- Project Title & Summary (up to 300 words) : Describe your proposed reporting, including a synopsis of the story or project, intended audience, distribution plan, and goals. Please include your ideas for visuals, knowing the scope may change based on the final budget.
- Solutions Lens (up to 300 words): Describe how your project explores local evidence-based, models, programs or emerging solutions that are working — not just what’s broken. Describe the solutions angle your reporting will pursue You can read more about the solutions journalism framework here.
- Timeline: Projects should be ready for publication within the grant period. Please provide a monthly high-level outline of your reporting and publication plan from August to December 2026.
- Publication Plan and Role of Visuals (up to 300 words): Describe your publication plan (digital, print, social media, etc.) and the role you envision visuals playing — including type(s), style, key collaborators, and how visuals will enhance the story. You can also include any links to relevant work samples to past stories.
- Project Team and Visual Commissioning: Key team members and contacts, including visual journalists or editors with relevant experience. If you’d like CatchLight’s support identifying a visual journalist, please note that here. For newsrooms who do not have a visual journalist in mind for the project or on staff, CatchLight can provide direct commissioning support and pay freelance photographers as needed separate from the $6,000 grant.
- Does your newsroom have a visual journalist on staff who will work on this project?
- Yes – a staff member who will lead the visual work
- No – We’d like CatchLight’s support commissioning a freelance photographer
- No – but we have a freelance photographer in mind; we’d like CatchLight to contract and pay them directly
- Unsure – would like to discuss
- If CatchLight is commissioning a photographer, how many days do you anticipate they’ll need in the field?
- 1-2 days
- 2–3 days
- 4–5 days
- 6-7 days
- 8 or more
- Unsure, would like to discuss
- Does your newsroom have a visual journalist on staff who will work on this project?
- Audience: Please share your circulation and a brief description of the audience your organization serves.
Sponsors
We are grateful to our community & media partners.
The Mental Health Initiative wouldn’t be possible without our funders
