Author

Byrhonda Lyons

Byrhonda Lyons is a national award-winning video journalist for CalMatters. She creates multimedia stories about how California policy affects people’s everyday lives. Byrhonda’s work has appeared on the PBS NewsHour, KPBS, KVIE-PBS, and local television stations throughout California. She’s won a National Headliner Award for her work during the 2018 elections and several awards from the California News Publishers Association (CNPA).

Prior to joining CALmatters, she was a freelance video producer and worked as a digital media specialist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. She was also an editor for the San Quentin News, an inmate-run newspaper in California. Byrhonda is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. When she’s not working, you can catch her searching archives for trailblazing black women who have been left out of history books.

Byrhonda's Latest Articles

Mentally ill prisoners in California are three times likelier to get shuffled around

California state prisons transfer people with serious mental illness far more frequently than other prisoners — sometimes moving them dozens of times — a CalMatters’ analysis of newly acquired state data has found.

Inmate shuffle: How California bounces around its mentally ill prisoners

Three decades after California’s prisons first came under court monitoring for rampant abuse and neglect of prisoners with mental illness, the system is still failing to protect its sickest inmates. For many, prison isn't a place to heal, it's a place to disappear. 

Join us Tuesday, Dec. 9 at 10:00 am PT for our next free webinar.

 

Some therapists who had trouble connecting with youth turned to another source of connection: Minecraft therapy, which follows the approach of play therapy. In this webinar, we’ll talk with two leading experts in the promising genre.

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How Minecraft Therapy Is Transforming Child and Teen Mental Health Care