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December 13, 2021
/ November 1, 2019
Daily News: On mental illness, we’re up to the challenge: ThriveNYC is responding properly and adapting, argues its director
November 1, 2019
Mental health crises are like forest fires: devastating when they occur, but, in many cases, preventable and treatable. And like a forest fire, every time a mental health crisis ignites in our city, we must view the tragedy as a chance to improve. How could these smoldering embers have been stopped from becoming a roaring fire? Where could water — treatment — have been applied? Whenever we focus on our reaction to a crisis in New York City, we are also looking ahead to preventing the next one before it begins.
Before last week, ThriveNYC’s budget included $122 million per year on services for those living with serious mental illness and other high-needs populations, including New Yorkers experiencing homelessness — half of the Office’s annual budget. Then, we announced $37 million more for new services focused specifically on the New Yorkers with the most serious mental health challenges.
But media coverage, including in the Daily News, trivializes or downplays this new plan. The fact is, it includes new innovations, like proactive outreach to people with the most frequent 911 usage to stop the cycle of crises. It includes a major expansion of services we know have an impact, like nine new mobile treatment teams to bring ongoing, clinical care to people who are homeless or have had trouble staying connected to more traditional services. It includes bringing together hospitals and community-based organizations to do everything possible to support vulnerable people in the months following a psychiatric episode.
Quite simply, this is a major step towards remaking how New York City prevents and responds to mental health crises.
Crises can and should be prevented. That’s why we’re investing in a range of new teams of health responders, which bring clinicians right to people in their communities to help them get care, reducing the need to call 911. Mobile health response teams are dispatched following a call to 888-NYC-WELL around 20,000 times per year, and as we add more teams and response times go down, this will become a realistic alternative to 911 for even more New Yorkers facing a challenge — or for people who care about someone at risk.
When an emergency requires a call to 911, our responses should de-escalate situations and ensure that those in need get care as quickly as possible. That’s why, for the first time in New York City, clinicians will assist in the response to 911 mental health calls, starting in two neighborhoods with a high concentration of people in need.
Serious mental illness is a complex topic that deserves a compassionate, long-term strategy, not a quick fix, and multiple city agencies devote significant resources to it every year. Health + Hospitals, the city’s public hospital network, serves as the front door for treatment of New Yorkers with acute mental illness or substance use, with 1,528 psychiatric inpatient beds across 11 hospitals, and a budget for inpatient behavioral healthcare of $700 million.
The Department of Homeless Services has a budget of over $2 billion, including $126 million for street outreach and Safe Haven and $189 million for mental health shelters. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spends over $300 million on serious mental illness, including $29 million for rehabilitation programs and, even before this new announcement, $25 million on mobile treatment.
New York City’s mental health system is far bigger than Thrive. The purpose of this new $37 million is to close critical gaps in care, ensuring that every New Yorker who needs it has access to mental health support.
No one would suggest that the response to a forest fire should only come after the fire is burning. When New Yorkers are suffering, we need to come together to do what science and common sense show us will work: keep people connected to the care that can make all the difference. This plan means mental health calls to 911 should go down, deployment of health-only responses should go up, and short-term psychiatric readmission to hospitals should go down. That’s how we’re taking on this challenge together, across the city, and we’re not done yet.
Herman is a senior adviser to the mayor and director of the Mayor’s Office of ThriveNYC.
