The de Blasio administration plans to spend $21 million in an attempt to treat more New Yorkers who are seriously mentally ill and make it easier for police to send certain individuals to hospitals if they stray from their required treatment regimens. The plan, announced Monday, came out of a comprehensive review of the city’s mental health services launched in October after four homeless men were killed by another homeless man in Chinatown.
City officials said they expect the funding and enhanced information-sharing among agencies will lead to an additional 900 people a year receiving treatment.
“It's sort of our best-informed estimate of the number of additional people who would benefit from intensive mobile treatment and would ultimately, hopefully, not be hospitalized because of their illness, or end up in jail because there's no other alternatives for them,” said Dr. Oxiris Barbot, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
In a potentially controversial move, the city’s plan calls for increasing the use of Kendra’s Law, a two decade-old measure that allows courts to mandate treatment for individuals who have a history of violence and hospitalizations. Randy Santos, the homeless man who allegedly killed the four men in Chinatown on Oct. 5, had been previously arrested for assault. His family believed he needed mental health treatment.
According to city data from October, 1,594 people in the city are receiving treatment under Kendra’s Law.
In the future, the NYPD will receive information about individuals who reject court-mandated treatment. If officers encounter those people, they could take them to the hospital. This arrangement has sparked concern among mental health providers who oppose any expansion of involuntary treatment.
“It actually increases people’s distrust in the service system and can make them less interested in treatment,” said Cal Hedigan, chief executive officer at Community Access, non-profit that provides housing and social services for people with mental health issues.
But D.J. Jaffe, executive director of Mental Illness Policy Org., said the proposed reforms don’t go far enough, arguing that the police department should be actively searching for people who reject court-mandated services.
“The police shouldn't wait until the next time they do something,” he said. “The police should go and get them before that happens. That's the whole purpose of Kendra’s Law.”
The plan unveiled Monday also includes $9.4 million to hire more social workers and housing specialists and to add mobile treatment teams that provide intensive mental health services to people where they live, rather than forcing them to visit hospitals or clinics. In addition, some $11 million will go to New York’s public hospital system to create outreach teams that will identify and help people who frequent emergency rooms.
The investment comes on top of $300 million the Health Department already spends annually on programs for the seriously mentally ill. By contrast, ThriveNYC, the city’s mental health initiative run by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, which has been criticized for lack of measurable outcomes, spends around 10 percent annually of its four-year $850 million budget on serious mental illness.
