:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elfinanciero/2DDRNGYE4VCMBH5Y4WAUBQTPCE.jpg "New York unveils controversial plan to get people with mental illness off the streets: El Financiero")
New York City’s latest plan to keep the mentally ill from languishing on the streets is presented as a common-sense strategy to get them help.
Encouraging police officers and municipal doctors to take more people with psychological disorders to hospitals, even if they refuse treatment, Mayor Eric Adams says he is approaching a problem in a humane way instead of looking the other way. But his policy will have to overcome a legal challenge and a cold reception from some municipal lawmakers. In emergency rooms, psychiatrists must determine whether such patients need hospitalization, perhaps against their will.
The difficulty of executing the plan
“Some people arrive very agitated and have to be restrained as soon as they enter the emergency room … But there are also those who arrive very calm and quiet, but just attempted suicide two hours ago,” said Dr. Joel A. Idowu , who heads the psychiatry department at the University of Richmond Medical Center on Staten Island.
“A person who is stable now can become unstable tomorrow,” he said.
Adams, police captain turned politician, announced the plan in late November. The Democrat’s first term has focused on what he sees as restoring a sense of safety and civic function disrupted during the coronavirus pandemic. Among other things, the less crowded streets and subways gave new visibility to the people who lived there, some of them mentally ill.
Under state law, police can compel people to be taken to a hospital to be evaluated if they appear mentally ill and their behavior poses a substantial risk of bodily harm to themselves or others.
This is often interpreted as violent or suicidal. But Adams said she is using the space in the law to address people “whose illness is endangering them by preventing them from meeting their basic human needs.”
