Kerry Morrison, founder of Heart Forward LA, shares her journey researching the “failures” of the U.S. mental health system, and what L.A. could learn about radical hospitality from a city with a robust community-based approach—Trieste, Italy.
While Kerry Morrison was the director of the Hollywood Business Improvement District, she noticed a serious disconnect in the ways the mental health and unhoused crises were being addressed and dealing with their root causes. After being awarded the Stanton Fellowship through the Durfee Foundation, Morrison spent two years looking for best practices both in the United States and abroad.
Her research eventually took her to the small coastal city of Trieste in Northern Italy. Starting after the closure of their last asylum, in 1980, the city opened the old facility to anyone who needed a place to stay with resources to support them. Flash forward to today, Trieste is a global leader in "radical hospitality" when it comes to mental health care. The city has set up community centers of care with professionals and supportive services to "treat them in wellness."
After bringing a delegation from Los Angeles County to Trieste and vice versa, Morrison and other L.A. officials began a mission to implement this method of care at home. While the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted some of the work, the L.A. County Department of Health is in the process of setting up a $116 million pilot program in Hollywood. Additionally after leaving the Hollywood BID, Morrison has started up her own non-profit called Heart Forward LA, with the goal of reshaping the American mental healthcare system based on the Trieste model.
For more on Morrison's journey and its implementation here in the United States, click here.
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