Latest news with #Kendra'sLaw
New York Post
08-05-2025
- Health
- New York Post
NYC Mayor Eric Adams does victory lap as new state rules make it easier to force mentally ill into treatment
Mayor Eric Adams lauded coming changes to state law that will make it easier to force mentally ill people into treatment — after he publicly pushed for the change for three years because of crime concerns. The new involuntary commitment law, which is included in the state's budget, will allow officials to take people off the streets when they show a substantial risk of physical harm to themselves because of an 'inability or refusal, as a result of their mental illness, to provide for their own essential needs such as food, clothing, necessary medical care, personal safety, or shelter.' Before the switch, people could only be involuntarily committed if they showed a substantial risk to physically harm themselves or others. 'Our advocacy has led to real progress,' Adams said during a victory-lap news conference at the Fulton Street subway station Thursday morning. 'We will know in Albany, it takes some time, several sessions, till we get to the full product, and we will continue to move forward on it.' 3 At a press conference, Adams called the state's new involuntary removal rules a 'huge shift' from the previous policy. 'Our clinicians have told us that the law was unclear on who they could transfer to hospitals for evaluation, which often resulted in quick discharge in times when people needed the help,' Adams said at the event. Adams has used his bully pulpit to push for changes to involuntary commitment laws as far back as 2022, but hadn't been able to get the changes across the finish line in the last few sessions. Brian Stettin, a senior advisor to the mayor and author of the law that allows for court-mandated mental health treatment, Kendra's Law, insisted Adams and his administration brought progressives around to support new rules for involuntary commitments. 3 A homeless person sits on the steps of the Times Square subway station in midtown Manhattan last month. Stephen Yang 'Because of the advocacy that Mayor Adams has done to bring some common sense into the conversation, even progressive-minded people have come to recognize that the mayor's position is the moral position,' Stettin said. 'We must take care of those who are the most vulnerable, even when they don't realize they need it,' he added. Stettin conceded that not all of the admin's proposals made it into the final language, but was happy with the progress. Additionally, under the new law, someone could now be committed after sign-off from an examining physician and a nurse practitioner rather than the two physicians required by the previous law. 3 Two people showed up to Adams' press conference holding signs that silently criticized the state's new involuntary removal policy. Paul Martinka The practitioners would have three days after someone is brought to the hospital to decide whether he or she should be committed and reach out to the patient's doctor if they have one. The final deal also included more requirements for psychiatric centers and local social services agencies to arrange discharge plans once someone is released from care. Hizzoner appeared to start the festivities a bit earlier than most involved, after being spotted rubbing elbows with rapper Nems Wednesday night. The Coney Island music maker posted an Instagram story showing himself and Adams at a hookah bar, blowing puffs of smoke into the air.
New York Post
06-05-2025
- Health
- New York Post
Cuomo unveils plan to fix NYC's mental health crisis — and it looks a lot like Adams' agenda
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday released his sprawling plan to fix the Big Apple's mental health crisis — ticking off many of the issues rival Mayor Eric Adams has already been pushing for. Cuomo, who is vying to unseat Adams as New York City's mayor, unveiled more than a dozen proposals to help get people with severe mental illness off the streets, including expanding involuntary hospitalizations and increasing psychiatric beds. But many of the key elements bear striking similarities to ones already rattled off by Hizzoner during his current stint in City Hall. Advertisement 'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,' an Adams' administration source told The Post after Cuomo's plan dropped. 'Especially when it comes to cleaning up situations created by the imitator.' One of Cuomo's main focuses would be removing those who are a danger to themselves from the streets, according to his 36-page proposal. Advertisement As part of the plan, Cuomo has vowed to expand the use of court orders under Kendra's Law — mainly by requiring 'universal screening' when people are discharged from public hospitals and from Rikers Island jail. Adams, for his part, has long called for the state law to be strengthened so the city can commit people suffering from severe mental illness for longer. Cuomo has also called for adding between 100 to 200 new inpatient psychiatric beds within the city's Health and Hospitals system in a bid to keep mentally ill perps out of Rikers. The additional inpatient beds are up from the 100-odd new beds Hizzoner touted during his State of the City speech earlier this year to tackle the crisis. Advertisement The former governor, too, floated boosting supportive housing units from 500 to 1,600 per year — up from the 900 'Safe Haven' beds promised by Adams to house the homeless and transition them to permanent housing. Cuomo also highlighted how the city needs to tap into involuntarily removing homeless people from the streets who can't meet their basic needs — a policy expansion that was put in place nearly three years ago under the Adams admin following a spate of horrifying subway attacks.
New York Times
06-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Cuomo Says New York Has a Mental Health Crisis. Here's His Plan.
In his bid to become mayor, Andrew M. Cuomo has portrayed New York City as being in crisis mode and has said that his top priority if elected would be keeping people safe. To do so, Mr. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, says the city must do more to remove people with severe mental illness from the streets and ease fears over high-profile attacks involving homeless people. On Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo will release a detailed 36-page plan about how he would do that, including expanding involuntary hospitalizations and requiring people who are discharged from public hospitals and jails to be screened for mandatory outpatient treatment. The plan includes more than a dozen proposals to address what he calls the city's 'mental health crisis.' Mr. Cuomo will call for adding more supportive housing units and psychiatric beds at hospitals and improving access to preventative mental health services. His main focus is on removing people who are a danger to themselves and the public. 'You don't want to institutionalize a person involuntarily unless you have to,' Mr. Cuomo said in an interview. 'But when you have to, you should for the person's own benefit, and that's what we haven't been doing.' Many of Mr. Cuomo's ideas are similar to those proposed by Mayor Eric Adams, who has struggled to confront concerns over public safety posed by mentally ill people in the streets. Gov. Kathy Hochul has also pushed for changes to force more people into treatment. There are roughly 2,000 homeless people with serious mental illness in the city. A series of attacks by homeless people in untreated psychosis exposed the failure of New York's mental health safety net and has led to anxiety among voters. Mr. Cuomo's plan would spend about $2.6 billion in capital funding over five years to build at least 600 additional units of supportive housing — deeply subsidized apartments with social services offered on site — each year. He also calls for expanding the use of court orders under Kendra's Law, a state law that allows courts to mandate outpatient treatment. Mr. Cuomo wants to require 'universal screening' when people are discharged from public hospitals and from the Rikers Island jail complex, to see if they should be subject to a Kendra's Law order. He would also work with state leaders to require private hospitals to do the same. Mr. Cuomo's opponents have argued that he deserves blame for making the mental health system worse by overseeing a reduction in psychiatric beds as governor. From 2012 to 2019, the number of beds in state psychiatric facilities fell by 23 percent. The loss of beds, which also happened in private hospitals in response to falling Medicaid reimbursement rates, accelerated in the wake of the pandemic. A shortage of psychiatric beds is cited as one of the main reasons that hospitals rush to discharge psychiatric patients, often before they are fully stabilized. Mr. Cuomo, who leads in polls ahead of the Democratic mayoral primary in June, defended his record in the plan and in the interview. The plan suggested that inpatient settings 'are often ineffective and inefficient places to deliver care' and that the reduction in state-hospital psychiatric beds was more than offset by the increase in beds in supportive housing and other residences for people who did not need inpatient care. The plan also calls for the city's Health and Hospitals system to add between 100 and 200 new inpatient psychiatric beds for people involved with the criminal justice system. Under Mr. Cuomo, the state also sharply reduced the portion it paid of the cost of sheltering people in New York City, shifting the burden onto the city. Zohran Mamdani, a state lawmaker who is in second place in mayoral polls, wants to create a new city agency called the Department of Community Safety to shift many mental health issues away from the police. Another candidate, Brad Lander, the city comptroller, has focused on a 'housing first' approach, which moves people straight from the streets into apartments, not into shelters, and does not require drug testing. Mr. Cuomo's plan said that the housing first model is a 'valuable strategy' but 'not a silver bullet,' in part because it does not do enough to ensure that unstable people, who can be 'disruptive to what is already a fragile ecosystem,' accept services. The plan argues that more people should be referred to treatment under Kendra's Law, which was approved in 1999 and named after Kendra Webdale, a woman who was killed that year when she was shoved in front of a subway train. But the system is already overburdened and allows people to fall through the cracks. A 2023 New York Times investigation found that people under Kendra's Law orders had been accused of more than 380 violent acts in the previous five years. Mr. Cuomo said that there were not sufficient penalties for noncompliance. If someone refuses to follow their treatment plan, the only consequence is that they can be taken to a hospital for evaluation, which often leads to their being discharged after 72 hours. Improving the mental health system was a central issue in state budget negotiations this year. Ms. Hochul and state lawmakers agreed last week to enshrine into state law existing guidelines that expand the criteria for taking people in psychiatric crisis to a hospital against their will. Mr. Adams, who withdrew from the Democratic primary to run for re-election as an independent in the general election in November, has called for more involuntary hospitalizations. In January, he announced his own $650 million plan to address street homelessness and severe mental illness. Mr. Cuomo said that Mr. Adams must do more to make sure that city health officials involuntarily hospitalize people who cannot meet their basic needs. 'We're not enforcing the legal standard, we're not really helping anyone, and we're endangering the public,' he said.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Hochul wants to expand involuntary commitment. NNY mental health officials say they prefer community care
Apr. 24—ALBANY — State lawmakers appear poised to include a legislative package in this year's budget that would make it easier for licensed professionals to commit someone to a mental hospital. The directors of two north country mental health and community services departments aren't convinced what's on the table will help in rural New York. In her budget proposal for 2025-26, Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul proposed an amendment to the state's mental hygiene laws; her core push is to allow for someone to be involuntarily committed to mental health care when they demonstrate an inability to provide themselves food, shelter or medical care, and remove the requirement that the individual has to demonstrate evidence of imminent risk of harm, or recently committed acts of violence or self-harm to qualify for commitment. She also proposed expanding the list of people who can authorize an involuntary commitment. Current laws require two physicians make the determination, which is then authorized by a psychiatrist. Hochul proposed changing that to require two doctors or one doctor and a nurse practitioner. Other changes around the edges include more monetary investments in youth mental health, and a change to the 1999 Kendra's Law that establishes involuntary outpatient treatment, by expanding who can apply for an outpatient treatment order against an individual, rolling out video conference options and enhancing voluntary post-treatment care opportunities. Dr. Ann Marie Sullivan, commissioner of the state Office of Mental Health, said these are being rolled out to address the most significant cases of mental illness that are impacting communities across the state. In early April, she stood with a handful of local lawmakers from the Capitol Region and downstate mental health treatment facility executives, highlighting a handful of high-profile recent incidents. She pushed back on arguments that involuntary commitment is a coercive tactic that doesn't work well. "It's not like involuntary commitment is ever the first thing you think of, and involuntary commitment happens when we feel that nothing has been successful with this individual," Sullivan said. "It's a tough decision to make." Tim Ruetten, the director of the Jefferson County Department of Community Services, said in an interview that he is generally opposed to using involuntary commitment except in the most dire of circumstances. "It's always a last resort, because it's traumatic, frankly," he said. "When someone's forced into a hospital, that's a very difficult experience." In Lewis County, Community Services and Mental Health Director Anna Platz said that while each case is different and commitment is occasionally required, her goal is to keep patients in their communities. "I think it only adds trauma when someone has to leave, especially in a community like Lewis County, because we don't have a 9.39 hospital," she said, referring to the state law definition of a hospital determined to be able to take involuntarily committed patients. In Jefferson County, Samaritan Medical Center is a 9.39 hospital and has recently invested in expanding its psychiatric ward, but Lewis County General does not have such services. Many rural counties are similarly without any inpatient mental health care facilities. As directors of county community services, Ruetten and Platz are empowered by state law to refer someone for an involuntary commitment evaluation, or designate people with medical knowledge to handle that within local hospitals. Ruetten said he rarely uses that power, and involuntary commitments of any origination are rare in Jefferson County. "When you do that, you're taking someone's rights away," he said. "That's serious." Hochul's proposal would lower the standard for what qualifies for commitment — making it easier for homeless people on the street to get swept up into the system. Ruetten said he doesn't think that's the right approach for the situation in Jefferson County. "It just doesn't make sense to hospitalize everyone who can't feed, clothe or house themselves," he said. "Everyone who is doing the work knows that won't work." He said that people unable to secure shelter or food reliably aren't always mentally ill, and those who are suffering from a mental illness aren't going to benefit significantly from a temporary commitment without some material change in their permanent living situation. But Ruetten said that there has been a definite spike in need. He said his department has been referred more cases of serious mental illness than in years past, and there are far more cases involving violence. There's also been a spike in the number of homeless people in Jefferson County — many of whom do need mental health care. Platz, who is relatively new to her role in Lewis County, said she wasn't able to directly speak to historic versus current demand for services in Lewis County, but said her colleagues who serve on the county Community Services Board have said demand is increased, especially for young people in the area. "It's not uncommon for me to hear about very complex, high need, high risk individuals who are struggling to get the support they need in our community," she said. "I've been in quite a few conversations about the behavioral needs of our youngest community members, our littlest community members, and those seem definitely to be more complicated." Ruetten said a solution that Jefferson County officials have developed is to rely more on a collaborative, not coercive, pathway to treatment. Provide always-available, low-barrier shelter for homeless people, engage in street outreach and relationship building, and allow for choice. "That works, that does what involuntary commitment and police pickup orders are trying to do here," he said. Jefferson County recently passed a package of legislation aimed at handling homelessness in the county — providing for 24/7 shelters outside of the cold season when the state helps cover costs with the Salvation Army and the New Life and Emmanuel Congregational churches, spinning up a street outreach program with ACR Health, and conducting a study on opioid addiction. To address wider mental health concerns, not necessarily including homelessness, Jefferson and Lewis counties are also putting together a mobile crisis unit, which will respond to incidents of extreme mental illness and personal crisis without immediately involving law enforcement. Those approaches are what Ruetten and Platz are focused on — ways to keep people in their community while addressing their mental illnesses, and giving people an opportunity to have choice and agency in their care. According to a source close to negotiations over the state budget not authorized to speak publicly, the deal that lawmakers and Hochul have come to will largely follow Hochul's original proposal, with a push to prioritize emergency medical services as the first point of contact for non-emergency pickups for evaluation, rather than police, for all pickups, and a requirement that involuntarily committed patients have more advanced discharge planning and outpatient service connections made before being sent out of the hospital. They also indicated the deal would cut the physician review process to require only one doctor or a physician's assistant and doctor agree that the patient needs to be committed before sending for a psychiatrist's review. Senate Majority Leader Andrea A. Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, told reporters after a Thursday afternoon budget meeting with Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, D-Bronx, and the governor that discussions are ongoing on most all topics and clear legislative language hasn't been tendered on involuntary commitment "I could tell you a little bit more definitively if we had language set on everything, but all of these things are still in process of being worked through, and we will have something as well with involuntary commitment," Stewart-Cousins said. Ruetten said he had some concerns about those changes as outlined. He said that Jefferson County, like most rural counties, has only private ambulance services available, which can't be directed to provide pickup services for involuntary commitment evaluations. "They can't bill for the service unless it's medically necessary," Ruetten said. "I've tried this in the past with ambulance services, it ends up being so cumbersome or impossible that I don't use it. I wouldn't, because unless I can provide a letter of medical necessity, the ambulance service can't bill for it." Under state law, local police departments are required to transport involuntary commitment candidates to their evaluations. Both Ruetten and Platz said they're not likely to push for more involuntary commitments in their communities, even as the state tries to expand their use. "The transportation, evaluation and potential admission of someone needing these supports is not something that we take lightly," Platz said. "It can be an extremely traumatic experience. This is not something that myself or my colleagues take lightly. We'd much rather keep them here in the community and wrap support around them."
