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Mental health and legal groups want New York lawmakers to think twice before backing Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to expand criteria for involuntary commitment, or forcing someone with a mental health issue to be hospitalized for treatment.
In her fourth State of the State address Tuesday, the governor is poised to unveil details of a controversial mental health proposal to keep mentally ill patients in hospital care.
Hochul wants to strengthen Kendra’s Law, which allows courts to order outpatient treatment for mental illness if a person is deemed a threat to themselves or others. The governor wants to improve the process for a court to order a person participate in assisted outpatient treatment on the heels of brutal attacks in New York City by people with a history of mental illness.
Nearly 20 advocacy groups wrote a letter to Hochul in opposition to the proposal, and they’re hoping lawmakers follow suit.
"Our folks are being targeted… and to round them up and force them into hospitals and outpatient commitment programs which have been proven not to work, we’re looking to defeat those bills," Alliance for Rights and Recovery CEO Harvey Rosenthal said.
They’re urging the Legislature to improve admission and treatment services and community-based resources for people battling mental illness.
"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 said they are open to loosening the involuntary commitment standard.
"Somehow the system is failing and 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 said police will have the authority to detain people in hospitals, but leaders continue to wait for more details in the governor’s budget to be released later this month before debating specifics.
Lawmakers will decide how to balance stricter enforcement with more resources for mental health services and first responders dealing with the crisis.
"To just put this on the cops to say ‘This is our idea, now go do it,’ I don’t think you’re going to be met with a lot of 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."
But mental health advocates insist the idea would do more harm to the broken system than good — arguing that forced hospitalizations have proven to be ineffective, and hospitals across the state do not have the capacity.
"It’s really about who we have respond to crisis calls," said Luke Sikinyi, director of public policy and public engagement with the Alliance for Rights and Recovery. "It’s really critical that we have the right people respond because a moment of crisis is often the first time that people interact 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 to make sure that that person’s crisis not only is mitigated in the moment, but ensuring that people don’t fall back into crisis once they’ve come out of rthat acute moment."
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins expects the debate will be complicated.
"We are not ignoring the crisis," Stewart-Cousins told reporters Monday. "But again, if you have no place to direct people, it is a problem as well."
She supports passing Daniel’s Law, which mandates a team trained in crisis services respond to calls of a person struggling with mental health or substance abuse in place of police.
Last year’s state budget included a pilot program for Daniel’s Law in the city of Rochester. Last month, the Daniel’s Law Task Force released recommendations that will likely influence lawmakers to consider new legislation to deploy specialized response teams when someone experiences a mental health or substance abuse crisis.
Mental Association of New York State CEO Glenn Liebman argues decades of disinvestment in the state’s mental health system cannot be fixed by expanding forced treatment.
He’s urging the Legislature to invest in the mental health workforce who make just above the minimum wage.
"We are losing too many people," Liebman said. "We are losing over 30% of our field on a yearly basis to people working, going to Amazon or McDonald’s. We are in a workforce crisis of enormous proportions."
