This week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams gave the city’s first responders, including its police department, a contentious new task: enforcing a state statute that permits them to commit anyone going through a mental health crisis against their will.
It is a fallacy, according to Adams, that first responders can only forcefully commit those who have shown signs of being aggressive, suicidal, or a danger to others through a “overt act.” Instead, he claimed that a lesser standard under the legislation authorised first responders to forcefully commit those who are unable to meet their own “basic human requirements.”
Adams, a former police officer, said officers will receive more training and on-the-spot help from mental health professionals while the police department continues to develop a plan.
The decision was made in response to a spate of violent incidents in New York City as well as the growing visibility of homeless camps in New York and other cities around the nation.
Adams presented the law as a way to assist those in need.
He declared that it was unacceptable for anyone to ignore someone who was obviously in need of assistance.
Supporters of the homeless are against this. Jacquelyn Simone with the Coalition for the Homeless told AWN’s Brynn Gingras for her piece that aired this week on “AC360°” that “the city really has to approach this more from a health and housing lens, rather than focusing on involuntary removals and policing.”
Experts in mental health are debating it. After Adams’ announcement, Matt Kudish, CEO of the New York chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, released a statement in which he stated that “we are defaulting to an extreme that takes away basic human rights.”
The City has the ability to provide treatment on-site as well as in homeless shelters or assisted housing, but has opted not to, according to Kudish, who suggested that New York could do more to assist people before they require intervention.
The police are concerned that it puts them in danger. Former NYPD detective Andrew Bershad told Gingras, “Now where does the liability form—on the uniformed officer—as soon as they wish to resist.”
I spoke with Ryan McBain, a researcher on public policy at the RAND Corporation who focuses on how government initiatives might benefit groups that are particularly at risk, such as individuals who are dealing with both mental illness and housing insecurity.
‘Escalation fuel,’
Adams’ conduct, according to McBain, is “well-intentioned but wrong,” in part because contacts between police and persons who are seriously mentally ill serve as “fuel for escalation.”
According to McBain, almost 1 in 4 people who are shot by police officers have serious mental health problems. In a 2015 Washington Post investigation, I discovered this information as I tried to validate the 25% number.
“If you give it some thought, it makes sense, doesn’t it? People who are confused or experiencing unusual thoughts are frequently unable to cooperate with a police officer, the man stated. “And considering that police officers are armed, you kind of have a prescription for bad results,” the speaker continued.
There is proof, he asserted, that pairing educated mental health doctors with police officers would increase effectiveness. First responders in New York will receive additional training and have access to a hotline staffed by mental health specialists.
The number of mental beds is probably insufficient.
Another problem is more structural and relates to how the US manages chronic and severe mental illness, moving from a system of huge institutional asylums that were closed in the 1960s and 1970s to a defective system centred on private insurance and community-based mental health facilities.
For psychiatric patients, there are not enough beds at the moment.
We don’t need enormous asylums with unsuitable circumstances, but we do need bigger facilities with more beds that can give people the kind of treatment they genuinely require when they have more severe mental health difficulties, according to McBain.
More comprehensive answers
There needs to be more long-term supportive housing for those who are homeless and have mental health difficulties. However, that kind of solution—having the government provide housing options for those who are unable to support themselves—can be costly and politically challenging.
Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania, expressed a similar viewpoint on “AC360°” on Thursday. This underlying issue, according to Culhane, is that. “Without having them in a setting where they can take care of themselves, you cannot actively and successfully treat them.”
According to McBain, the US healthcare system, which is focused on insurance paying for services, does not treat mental and physical health equally.
The best-case scenario, according to him, “would have a continuum of treatment for addressing people’s mental health issues.”
And that continuum would start with premium outpatient services, which private insurers would cover on par with physical health issues. He asserted, “Mayor Adams is advocating putting a Band-Aid on something for which you really need sutures. I think until you see the system try to handle these issues in a holistic approach, these challenges are going to endure.”