NY Mayor Announces Long-term Plan To Care For Severely Mentally Ill - Release

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th November, 2022) New York Mayor Eric Adams announced a long-term, 11-point plan to tackle the mental health crisis that the city has long struggled to deal with, a press release from the mayor's office said.

"Today, we are embarking on a long-term strategy to help more of those suffering from severe and untreated mental illness find their way to treatment and recovery," Adams said in a press conference. "... We can no longer deny the reality that untreated psychosis can be a cruel and all-consuming condition that often requires involuntary intervention, supervised medical treatment, and long-term care. We will change the culture from the top down and take every action to get care to those who need it."

Adams said the plan "begins with an immediate shift in how we interpret our obligation to those in need and calls upon our outreach workers to take deeper actions and more intensive engagements."

"To begin that process, our team has developed an 11-point legislative agenda to address those gaps, and getting it enacted will be a major priority for us in 2023. This agenda is already available online and to the public. But even as we move forward on that agenda, there is much we can do now by properly interpreting and carrying out existing law," Adams said.

The mayor said the directive his administration has created lays out what he calls an expedited, step-by-step process for involuntarily transporting a person experiencing a mental health crisis to a hospital for evaluation. Among the provisions: mobile crisis teams and police officers will receive enhanced training on how to help people experiencing a mental health crisis.