Mental health and legal organizations want New York lawmakers to think twice before supporting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to broaden the criteria for involuntary commitment, or forcing someone with a mental health problem to be hospitalized for treatment.
In her fourth State of the State address on Tuesday, the governor is expected to reveal details of a contentious mental health proposal to keep mentally ill patients in hospitals.
Hochul wants to strengthen Kendra’s Law, which allows courts to order outpatient mental health treatment for people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others.
Following brutal attacks in New York City by people with a history of mental illness, the governor wants to improve the process by which a court orders a person to participate in assisted outpatient treatment.
Nearly 20 advocacy groups wrote a letter to Hochul opposing the proposal, and they hope lawmakers will follow suit.
“Our people are being targeted… and to round them up and force them into hospitals and outpatient commitment programs that have proven to be ineffective, we’re looking to defeat those bills,” Alliance for Rights and Recovery CEO Harvey Rosenthal said.
They are urging the legislature to improve admission and treatment services, as well as community-based resources for people suffering from mental illnesses.
“They need to be better funded, but most services… they’re not well-coordinated,” Rosenthal told Spectrum News 1. “And that’s a big part of the issue.”
Legislative leaders have stated that they are willing to loosen the involuntary commitment standard.
“Somehow the system is failing us as a state, and I just think we need to come up with a way to do better,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters last week.
Hochul has stated that police will have the authority to detain people in hospitals, but leaders are still waiting for more details in the governor’s budget, which is expected later this month, before debating specifics.
Lawmakers will consider how to strike a balance between stricter enforcement and increased resources for mental health services and first responders dealing with the crisis.
“To just put this on the cops and say, ‘This is our idea, now go do it,’ I don’t think you’ll have much success,” Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt said Monday. “Because if they don’t have the manpower to achieve it, it’s just not going to happen.”
However, mental health advocates argue that the proposal would do more harm than good to the broken system, as forced hospitalizations have proven to be ineffective, and hospitals across the state lack the necessary capacity.
“It’s really about who we have responding to crisis calls,” said Luke Sikinyi, director of public policy and public engagement at the Alliance for Rights and Recovery. “It is critical that the right people respond because a crisis is often people’s first interaction with our system.
Making sure that interaction is positive and encourages further interactions and engagement with treatment services and other community-based services is a critical step in ensuring that that person’s crisis is not only mitigated in the moment, but also that they do not relapse into crisis once they have recovered from that acute moment.”
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins anticipates that the debate will be complicated.
“We are not ignoring the crisis,” Stewart-Cousins told reporters on Monday. “But again, if you have no place to direct people, it is a problem as well.”
She supports the passage of Daniel’s Law, which requires a crisis services team to respond to calls from people struggling with mental health or substance abuse instead of police.
Last year’s state budget included a Daniel’s Law pilot program in Rochester. Last month, the Daniel’s Law Task Force issued recommendations that are likely to persuade lawmakers to consider new legislation to deploy specialized response teams in the event of a mental health or substance abuse crisis.
Glenn Liebman, CEO of the Mental Association of New York State, argues that expanding forced treatment will not address decades of underinvestment in the state’s mental health system.
He’s urging the Legislature to invest in the mental health workforce, which earns just above the minimum wage.
“We are losing too many people,” Liebman stated. “We lose more than 30% of our field each year to people working, going to Amazon, or McDonald’s. We are facing an enormous workforce crisis.”
