Addressing one of New York City’s biggest challenges recovering from the pandemic, Mayor Eric Adams announced: mental health agenda On Thursday, we will expand key services for people with severe mental illness.
About 100,000 adults in the city have severe untreated mental illness, with symptoms such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, city officials say. . There are thousands of people whose care is sloppy and inconsistent.
The reasons for the gap are many, including the lack of available psychiatrists, the lack of coordination between hospitals and other health care providers, and the use of prisons as de facto (and woefully inadequate) psychiatric facilities. including being
Mr. Adams’ plans include:
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Expanding Programs to Send Medical Professionals Instead of Police Officers Answer a mental health 911 call.
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Expansion of the “Clubhouse” — a community hub for people with mental illness who often struggle in isolation, connecting them to educational and employment opportunities and fostering friendships.
“This is the next step in how we can help those in need before they are in crisis by making health care, communities and homes accessible to everyone,” Adams said at City Hall. rice field. “Improve access to specialized and primary care where needed to support people with serious mental illness and their families.”
plan — The latest in a series of related actions by the mayor and Gov. Kathy Ho-Chol — As the city nears the third anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic, many New Yorkers struggle psychologically, overdose deaths and homelessness continue. It was a period of rapid growth.
Last fall, Democrat Adams, who ran for public safety messages, announced plans to remove homeless people with severe mental illness who pose a threat to themselves and others from the streets and transfer them to hospitals if needed. . Mr. Adams has received both praise and admiration. violent backlash To the cleanup of his homeless camp, the deployment of police on the subway, and the involuntary eviction policy.
Ho-chol, also a Democrat, in January forced hospitals to reopen hundreds of psychiatric beds that they closed during the pandemic, keeping psychiatric patients in hospitals until they stabilized, and communicating with community health providers and discharge plans. and said it would create a mobile treatment. The team in New York City he serves more than 2,000 people.
police station in crisis
The NYPD faces challenges on several fronts.
The mayor’s new plan lacks details on implementation and costs. The city needs to put together funds for most of them.
This accompanies policies the mayor announced in the fall focused on how the city will deal with people who are fully clarified in public. While the plan attracted a lot of support, it was criticized by some as being overbearing and intimidating. A new plan that focuses entirely on treatments that people can voluntarily access is aimed at preventing them from falling apart in the first place.
To do so, city health commissioner Ashwin Bassan said it was necessary to prevent “the segregation, precarious housing and precarious clinical care that contribute to the crisis.”
The plan to tackle severe mental illness is part of a broader behavioral health policy announced by the mayor on Thursday, which includes tackling addiction and the mental health needs of children. The city has set a goal of reducing overdose deaths by 15% by 2025. As part of that, we opened a public vending machine selling naloxone, an overdose reverser.drug death nearly 80% jumped From 2019 to 2021.
The plan also targets racial inequality. Black and Hispanic New Yorkers with severe mental illness are disproportionately likely to receive inadequate or no treatment.
A frequent critic of the mayor’s homelessness policy said the plan would not lead to meaningful change.
Craig Hughes, a social worker at the Bronx office of Mobilization for Justice, a nonprofit law firm that represents many mentally ill and low-income New Yorkers, says that as long as the mayor asks for help, he can “seek help, need help.” “Thousands of people who are trying will miss help.” We continue to use the police to deal with homeless people, leaving supportive housing vacancies unfilled.
The city’s plans include building six new community behavioral health centers for low-income residents with federal funding. $7 million in city funding is needed to expand the Clubhouse, widely recognized as a cost-effective way to help people with severe mental illness stay connected to support.
The plan will also create 15 more mobile treatment teams serving more than 800 people, including five teams dedicated to the most difficult patients who frequently move between shelters, prisons, streets and hospitals. I am looking for
These teams, called Intensive Mobile Treatment teams (IMTs), include social workers, peer counselors, and psychiatric professionals. They have a wide range of offering assistance wherever and whenever clients need it. It can help you find housing, connect you to benefits, or solve everyday problems.
Jody Rudin, president of the Institute for Community Living, which operates six IMT teams under contract with the city, applauded the plan.
“I think the resources are well placed in terms of where the need is most acute,” she said. “When you look at this plan in conjunction with the governor’s plan, it’s clear that the focus is on mental health like never before.”
Brandon Jackson, 32, a client of the institute’s IMT team, who has been incarcerated for violent robbery and hospitalized for causing chaos at a shelter, has spent the past year He said the team helped put him on the road to stability.
“For medical, educational, whatever the community needs,” he said. “If you need food, if you need clothes, if you need to find a safe haven, they are there to help you everywhere.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Jackson moved into what he hopes will be his long-term home. It is a shared apartment in supportive housing with on-site social services.
