Supporting People with Severe Mental Illness

Fumi Mitsuishi, MD, MS, is driven to bring high-quality mental health care to everyone, especially those who are most vulnerable. As the the executive director of Citywide Case Management, a division of UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry, she leads a team that provides outpatient care for people struggling with serious mental illness and poverty in San Francisco. 

When COVID-19 made in-person care impossible, UCSF: The Campaign donations enabled her teams to distribute hundreds of cell phones to clients for telehealth visits, providing a lifeline to clients unable to receive in-person visits due to the pandemic. Her patients are like family, and this connection drives her passion to change the system of mental health delivery and make it a little more fair for everyone. In the video below, she shares a deeply personal story about how her work has intersected with her own experience.