You are reading

Op-Ed: Action, Care and Compassion: My Administration’s Approach to Addressing Severe Mental Illness

Mayor Eric Adams announces a new pathway forward to address the ongoing crisis of individuals experiencing severe mental illnesses left untreated and unsheltered in New York City’s streets and subways. City Hall. Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.

Dec. 6, 2022 Op-Ed By NYC Mayor Eric Adams 

Our city is facing a crisis. New Yorkers with severe and untreated mental illness are living out in the open, on our streets and in our subways. They are in danger and need help, yet often, the nature of their illnesses prevents them from seeking the support they require.

My Administration is determined to do more to assist people with mental illness, especially those with untreated psychotic disorders who pose a risk of harm to themselves, even if they are not an imminent threat to the public. Moving forward, we will take several key steps.

The most important is for our outreach workers, hospital staff, and police officers to be aware that New York law already allows us to intervene when untreated severe mental illness prevents a person from meeting their basic human needs, causing them to be a danger to themselves.

We will continue to do all we can to persuade those in need of help to accept services voluntarily. But we have also given our mobile crisis teams—comprised of clinicians—specific guidance for involuntarily transporting a person experiencing a mental health crisis to a hospital for evaluation.

This will occur when a person refuses voluntary assistance, and it appears that they are suffering from severe mental illness and are a danger to themselves due to an inability to meet their basic needs. We believe this is the first time that a mayoral administration has given this direction on the “basic needs” standard in official guidance.

Our mobile crisis teams and police officers will also receive enhanced training on how to assist those in mental health crisis. This will include an in-depth discussion of what “inability to meet basic needs” means, and an array of options to consider before resorting to involuntary removal.

We will launch a hotline staffed by clinicians from our H+H hospitals to provide guidance to police officers who encounter individuals in psychiatric crisis as well. The hotline will allow an officer to describe what they are seeing to a clinical professional, or even use video calling to get an expert opinion on what options may be available.

In addition to these steps, we will ask our partners in Albany to make important fixes to the New York State Mental Hygiene Law.

These fixes include a common-sense expansion of the information that a hospital doctor considers in deciding whether to discharge a psychiatric patient. All too often, a person enters a hospital in crisis and is discharged prematurely simply because their current behavior is no longer as alarming as it was when they were admitted.

Our agenda also calls for allowing a broader range of licensed mental health professionals to staff our mobile crisis teams, and for a broader range of trained professionals to perform psychiatric evaluations in hospitals. This will help us get more outreach teams on the ground and enable hospital psychiatrists to spend more time providing medical care directly to patients.

These are just a few of the needs our legislation addresses. We will be doing more to help people with severe mental illness access “assisted outpatient treatment,” and coordinated care.

All these efforts are based on my core conviction that people with untreated severe mental illness deserve care, community, and treatment in the least restrictive setting possible. By helping our brothers and sisters with severe mental illness, my administration will also be protecting the rights of every New Yorker to live, work, thrive and be safe.

To learn more, please see: PsychiatricCrisisCare_v1.indd (nyc.gov)

email the author: news@queenspost.com
No comments yet

Leave a Comment
Reply to this Comment

All comments are subject to moderation before being posted.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Recent News

Brooklyn man killed on Belt Parkway in Howard Beach after crash sends SUV into tree: NYPD

A Brooklyn man was killed in a high-speed chain-reaction crash near Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach on Tuesday night.

Police from the 106th Precinct in Ozone Park responded to a 911 call of a vehicle collision on the Belt Parkway and 79th Street at around 11:12 p.m. and found a 25-year-old man unconscious and unresponsive with trauma to the body. EMS responded to the scene and rushed him to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said Wednesday. He was later identified as Nicolas Blagovisny of Stuart Street in Sheepshead Bay.

Bronx man killed in single-vehicle crash on the Nassau Expressway in Springfield Gardens: NYPD

A Bronx man was killed in a horrific crash on the Nassau Expressway near JFK Airport early Wednesday morning.

Police from the 113th Precinct in Jamaica responded to a 911 call about a vehicle collision near Exit 3 on the Nassau Expressway, where they found the 25-year-old motorist had been ejected from his BMW. EMS responded to the scene and rushed the victim to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. He was later identified as Andre A. Beadle of Mickel Avenue in the Pelham Gardens section of the Bronx.

State Senator Joseph Addabbo cruises to victory past GOP challenger Danniel Maio

Like he has done so many times in the past, State Senator Joseph Addabbo Jr. is thanking the community for re-electing him after he defeated his Republican challenger, Danniel Maio, by nearly 40 points on election night.

Addabbo was first elected to the Senate in 2008 after serving seven years in the City Council. “I am deeply honored and grateful to receive the trust of my constituents once again,” Addabbo said.

NYC immigrant groups denounce Trump’s re-election, pledge to protect immigrant communities

Nov. 6, 2024 By Ethan Marshall

In the wake of Donald Trump being re-elected President of the United States Tuesday, multiple New York City-based immigrant organizations have released statements in which they criticized Trump for his history of anti-immigrant rhetoric and reinforced their missions to protect immigrants from any unconstitutional actions his administration may take to get them deported.

AM Pheffer Amato will have to wait once again to declare victory over GOP challenger

Assembly Member Stacey Pheffer Amato will have to wait to see if the voters of South Queens are sending her back to Albany, where she has been one of the most prolific legislators in recent years.

Pheffer Amato holds a slim two-and-a-half-point lead over her Republican challenger, Thomas Sullivan, in a rematch of the 2022 race that she won by just 15 votes after waiting nearly two months to declare victory.