35 Years of Efforts to Address Mental Illness on New York Streets

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

35 Years of Efforts to Address Mental Illness on New York Streets

Mayors have launched numerous initiatives over the years to remove people with severe mental illness from the streets and subways.

By Andy Newman
Dec. 2, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

Mayor Eric Adams defended his plan to involuntarily hospitalize mentally ill homeless people on Thursday, saying that he was determined to lead the city into “uncharted waters where others were afraid to go” and tackle a social ill that “everyone else punted on.”

The mayor’s program — under which the police, medics and clinicians will have people deemed unable to care for themselves brought to hospitals — may be ambitious. But it is hardly unprecedented.

Every few years, going back to the mayoralty of Ed Koch, at least, there has been a push to get emotionally disturbed people off the streets, often in response to a violent attack that horrifies the city.

The problem, said Shelly Nortz, deputy executive director for policy for the Coalition for the Homeless, is that “they haven’t built enough of the right places for them to go.” The mental health system turned away decades ago from long-term institutionalization in psychiatric hospitals, but has never come up with an adequate replacement, she said.

Some programs designed to fill the breach are either limited or flawed. ...

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/nyregion/mental-illness-homeless-streets.html

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Earlier DU thread: Mayor says NYC will treat mentally ill, even if they refuse

[Thunderbeast]

1. WHERE are these folk going to be taken?

I am involved with my city's mental health advocacy community. Our county's largest outpatient provider now only takes new patient intake applications by phone on the first day of the month. Capacity dictates that only a subset of those callers get appointments during that month. The rest are told to call back following month. If all callers got intake interviews, they would wait nine months.

In-patient beds have been scarce for decades. People languish in Emergency Departments for days or weeks waiting for a treatment bed to open up. State institutions now serve forensic (criminal) patients nearly exclusively.

I do not disagree with lowering the bar to require treatment for those severely ill people who are at risk on our streets. The current permissive model is not humane or sustainable. Without major investment in treatment infrastructure, including training and paying for staff, the plan to commit more patients will end with them where they always end...County jails.

[pfitz59]

2. NIMBY-ism and Anti-tax zealotry has taken its toll

No one wants a 'funny farm' in their neighborhood, and no-one wants to pay for it. Americans would rather walk by the homeless mental ill and ignore them.