Several City Council committees came together to publicly examine Mayor Adams’ recent directive to have police and emergency medical workers involuntarily hospitalize those on the street deemed too mentally ill to care for themselves.
By the end of the hearing, two new bills had been introduced — one regarding additional police training on engaging with people on the autism spectrum, and another mandating a city-run online mental health services portal for those seeking help.
“Access to services is critical, but sadly, I hear from constituents who are facing barriers to care due to lack of information and lack of options when it comes to paying for care,” Abreu said. “I’m hopeful this legislation will ensure that all city resources are centralized in one place for maximum benefit to those in need.”is not a solution to our City’s homelessness crisis,” Brooklyn Councilmember Shahana Hanif said.
Because of this incident, Graham-Nyaasi said she’s learned the power that peers, people who have lived mental health experiences, can have if they were involved with emergencies rather than police. When people are involuntarily brought to hospitals, they are given medical and psychiatric evaluations, an emergency room stay of up to three days, and a thorough assessment. Outreach is conducted to find out more information about their history.
The directive would also give mental health staff at shelters and other adult care facilities the authority to direct involuntary removals of a resident in a psychiatric crisis. The agenda acknowledged the need for more mobile crisis outreach teams, and recommended that teams also include licensed mental health counselors and licensed marriage and family therapists.
Adams said in a one-on-one interview with amNewYork Metro last December that was on his visits around the city’s subway with Ashwin Vasan, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene commissioner, that he realized people who worked in mental health were unaware of how to exercise their authority during mental health emergencies. Adams said the city needed 1,000 hospital beds in private and public hospitals focused on medication and stabilizing someone’s condition.
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