Mental health treatment for Santa Monica, CA

Santa Monica is a coastal city of roughly 90,700 people on the western edge of Los Angeles County, and the single most important fact for how its residents reach us is distance: our only facility sits about 62 miles southeast in Laguna Hills, connected to Santa Monica almost entirely by the I-405. The 405 is one of the most congested freeways in the United States, and the Sepulveda Pass and West LA segments closest to Santa Monica are routine bottlenecks morning and evening. A free-flowing trip runs about 75 minutes, but a realistic round trip on an Intensive Outpatient schedule — several evenings a week — can stretch to four or five hours of driving. For almost anyone living here, that is not sustainable, which is why Virtual IOP, our full Intensive Outpatient curriculum delivered over secure video to any California resident, is the honest, practical way Santa Monica residents engage with Manifest. In-person PHP and IOP at our Laguna Hills facility remain open to anyone who chooses to make the drive.

Who needs that flexibility says a lot about Santa Monica. This is the heart of “Silicon Beach,” where Snap Inc., Activision Blizzard, Hulu, Lionsgate, and Universal Music Group sit alongside a dense professional, scientific, and creative workforce. It is an affluent, well-educated city — median household income near $114,900, median age around 42.7 — yet that prosperity coexists with acute housing-cost pressure and a significant unhoused population, both of which shape local behavioral-health demand. High-pressure tech and entertainment careers drive real anxiety, depression, and burnout, and the people carrying that load usually cannot step away from work for hours at a time to commute to Orange County.

Santa Monica College, one of California’s largest community colleges and the state’s leading UC-transfer feeder, anchors the Sunset Park area and adds thousands of young adults — many transfer-track and financially stretched — to the population that needs accessible outpatient mental-health and substance-use care. Our care for depression, anxiety, trauma and PTSD, bipolar disorder, and co-occurring substance use is handled by a single team that keeps mental-health and substance treatment together instead of routing them to separate referrals. To be clear about what we are: an outpatient provider, not a residential, detox, or round-the-clock crisis facility. For an emergency, Santa Monica residents should call 911 or call or text 988, and the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health ACCESS line at 800-854-7771 is a free, confidential, 24/7 local resource; the nearest emergency departments are Providence Saint John’s Health Center and UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center.

We see adults from neighborhoods across the area, including Ocean Park, Sunset Park, Pico, Wilshire-Montana, Mid-City, Downtown. Familiar local landmarks near our service area include Santa Monica Pier, Palisades Park, Third Street Promenade , and more.

Manifest Behavioral Health is an outpatient program, not a 24/7 crisis or detox facility. Below are the designated local emergency hospitals and regional crisis lines for this area. When a higher level of medical care or supervised withdrawal is needed first, we coordinate the referral and welcome you into our programs afterward.

In crisis? Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24/7) or 911 for an emergency.