New York City to Remove Mentally Ill People From Streets Against Their Will

[Celerity]

Mayor Eric Adams directed the police and emergency medical workers to hospitalize people they deemed too mentally ill to care for themselves, even if they posed no threat to others.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/nyregion/nyc-mentally-ill-involuntary-custody.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20221130031541/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/nyregion/nyc-mentally-ill-involuntary-custody.html



Acting to address “a crisis we see all around us” toward the end of a year that has seen a string of high-profile crimes involving homeless people, Mayor Eric Adams announced a major push on Tuesday to remove people with severe, untreated mental illness from the city’s streets and subways.

Mr. Adams, who has made clearing homeless encampments a priority since taking office in January, said the effort would require involuntarily hospitalizing people who were a danger to themselves, even if they posed no risk of harm to others, arguing the city had a “moral obligation” to help them.

“The common misunderstanding persists that we cannot provide involuntary assistance unless the person is violent,” Mr. Adams said in an address at City Hall. “Going forward, we will make every effort to assist those who are suffering from mental illness.”

The mayor’s announcement comes at a heated moment in the national debate about rising crime and the role of the police, especially in dealing with people who are already in fragile mental health. Republicans, as well as tough-on-crime Democrats like Mr. Adams, a former police captain, have argued that growing disorder calls for more aggressive measures. Left-leaning advocates and officials who dominate New York politics say that deploying the police as auxiliary social workers may do more harm than good.

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[TexasTowelie]

1. By coincidence, I just ran across this video so I thought that I would share:

[Lunabell]

2. I am not sure I have a problem with this...yet.

They may be a danger to themselves by neglect. Some mentally ill people may need a respite from the elements. It could be a good thing, but it ccould easily be bad. I'm reserving judgment.

[onetexan]

3. I dont have a problem with it, rather i support the mayor's efforts

Not only are these poor ppl a danger to themselves, theyre also a danger to the public. Leaving them to fend for themselves is not the way a civilized society should deal with such a problem. The mentally incapacitated need help & be taken care of. Either the cruel streets will hurt them or they may hurt themselves & others.

[betsuni]

7. +1

[WhiskeyGrinder]

16. "The mentally incapacitated need help & be taken care of."

The will not get it in involuntary detention.

[NYC Liberal]

29. Nor will they get it on the streets.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

30. Gosh guess we'll have to give them the help they do need.

[NYC Liberal]

31. Correct but it may not be voluntarily.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

32. Offered the right way, it often is. It just takes time, staffing and resources that cities would

much rather put towards cops because forcing struggling people elsewhere by criminalizing poverty makes the wider population feel "safer" than providing services where people need them.

[Hortensis]

27. Yes. By definition this applies to people who CAN'T reliably meet

their needs for basic survival. Many are often miserable and frightened.

I'm a liberal and a Democrat, and I believe in progressive use of government by the people to serve the people.

Each one of those three holds that we should care for people who cannot care for themselves. And that we require it be done at least adequately and with as much protection of the rights and freedoms of each individual as possible.

NY's "new" law is a very low bar, but a liberal, progressive, Democratic one.

With societal commmitment it's doable. We know that.

[Prairie_Seagull]

33. Same here (reserving judgement). More people out of the weather,,,seems good.

Especially if they are truly unable to care for themselves. Forced commitment? How this is managed will be everything.

[luv2fly]

4. Don't involuntary commitment laws apply here?

I would assume the answer is yes, requiring adherence to existing protocols as, I believe, are defined here.

Given the way Adams himself sometimes behaves, I question his motives. On the surface this may sound good, however his "tough on crime" (cough cough) bravado leaves me skeptical and indeed, cops serving in this role is a recipe for bigger problems.

[RocRizzo55]

5. They'll never catch me! nt

[SouthernDem4ever]

12. Ha!

[David__77]

6. After being "evaluated," then what?

Are they given more than a couple days of shelter? It sounds like a means of effectively criminalizing being homeless and expanding police discretion to cart people away.

[AngryOldDem]

9. They're back out on the streets within days.

I’m speaking as someone who once worked with this community in a shelter environment. Back then, someone had to be in severe mental distress before anything could be done, i.e., a threat to themselves or to others. But, in order to make that determination, we had to have them “evaluated” by an outside “crisis care” team. The dark joke among us was, “If you’re in a crisis, don’t call crisis care” — because it truly was a joke. They would do a phone consult to determine if it was even worth their time to come out. I once spent about two hours ON HOLD trying to get help for a suicidal client. We would do everything short of calling the police to deal with clients who were in crisis, because cops made things a billion times worse.

There are almost no resources to help this segment of the homeless community. They get a 48- to 72-hour standard observation IF they are hospitalized, and I doubt very much if they get any kind of help or assessment while there. The suicidal person I was on the phone about was back at the shelter in a matter of days.

It is criminal, because a lot of homeless people have severe mental illness. If society could see fit to provide a fraction of the assistance they need, it would go a long way. Instead, what NYC is doing is typical — pick them up, put them down somewhere else, and forget about them until they come back. The hospitals will kick them out at first opportunity — guaranteed. They don’t want them, either.

Needless to say, all this shit had its start back in the ‘80s when dear Saint Ronnie decided deinsitutionalization — with no help — was the answer to severe mental illness.

Sorry for the long post, but even years later this issue gets me worked up.

[David__77]

10. Thank you for sharing that.

Terrible stuff.

[LittleGirl]

11. This is exactly why healthcare needs to be changed

You point out every reason why this is such a bad idea.
St. Ronnie released people that couldn’t take care of themselves and end up homeless sometimes. Thank you for your post. I think it should be an OP.

[AngryOldDem]

14. Actually, the bottom line is that society treats this community like flotsam and jetsam.

The places where they could be safe and get the help they needed are mostly closed. Case management services are overloaded and understaffed. Wait times for government assistance are ridiculous. People with no formal training in psychiatry or psychology (like me and my coworkers) have to deal with emergency situations that we hope we won’t make worse.

Some people cannot function outside a controlled environment. Hard truth. Many don’t have families that are willing or able to care for them. So society’s answer to this is to keep moving them around, hoping to keep them invisible, and to make them somebody else’s problem. It is a massively cruel and failed policy.

(As bad as the mental health aspect of this is, people with physical health problems get treated just as poorly, especially now that most hospitals are for-profit.)

[LittleGirl]

18. Exactly. I really appreciate your points

because they are true and honest. I agree.

[SouthernDem4ever]

13. Treating different mental illnesses is complex.

The scientific side of the medical community likes to categorize or classify everything into one diagnosis so they can attempt to fix it. Mental illness is too complex for that. An approach requires fixing the persons physiology, if possible, and dealing with psychological aftermath. Everyone is different and respond to therapies differently so it makes it more difficult to accomplish systematically. A holistic approach is what is necessary and I remember some good hospitals in the 70's that did spend the time and resources on each patient to accomplish a better outcome. Today, insurance companies balk at covering mental health services in this manner because of the costs which gives patients half or less of what they need for long term success. So the cheapest and easiest thing to do is tranquilize and discharge.

[Model35mech]

22. It's hard to treat things whose mechanisms are poorly known or unknown

It's quite remarkable that over 125 years of modern psychology the mechanisms of many, possibly most, psychological disorders remain mostly obscure. That's not a knock against all those who should be thanked for none-the-less working to better define the mechanisms.

And in the absence of real understanding narratives are developed and applied and enter the traffic of average human discourse... like mental disorders are a 'chemical imbalance'... and the 'cause is complex', and thus hard to understand 'mix of genetic, developmental and environmental factors'. But these running beliefs actually don't provide a mechanism to target.

So, it seems much of treatment is aimed at mitigation of a confusing array of overlapping symptoms that make diagnosis itself a system of elimination of speculations on identity of disorders, usually focused on things that cause harm and disruption of life to the afflicted and their (usually) close others. And so treatment looks to relieving apparent manifestations of dysfunction and distress of the afflicted and not underlying mechanisms of causation.

In this its important to appreciate that real, and yes, often misperceived, social dysfunction seriously impacts political consideration of how cities, counties, and states choose to address the epidemic of mental illness.

And policy decisions are based on the knowledge and stigmatized beliefs of politicians and members of the electorate. How limited the difference between harm to others actually is between mentally-well people and mentally-disordered persons is largely overlooked. A gap that generated punishing stigmatization. And I do have concern that stigmatized beliefs may be as significant to New York's policy-making as is psychology and neuroscience.

The mayor of New York seems concerned about the number of homeless, their lack of social capacity, and consequent incapacity for self-care, which are burdensome for New York, and every other place in the country. I would assume he is creating this policy in a social milieu that is at least as complex and limited in understanding as mental disorders are.

Clearly some of the social sequelae of mental disorders can be addressed by collecting the homeless off the street and placing them in settings with care. I will hope for the Mayor's policy that treatment will actually follow, rather than caging the afflicted, and later gifting them with a bus-ticket to another unsuspecting and unprepared city (google 'Greyhounding the mentally ill).

[SouthernDem4ever]

34. Like you, I hope the Mayor isn't just going to fix the aesthetics but really get the care

to those that need it. Just locking people up or placing them in a hidden place without care is the wrong way to do it.

[bdamomma]

15. Very good post

you have some valid points. People who suffer from mental illness need to be assessed professionally, whether they are a threat to themselves or others, or in some cases medication may help them. Police do not help who suffer from mental illness, police seem to escalate the situation not de-escalate the situation.

[MerryBlooms]

35. They're worse off than when they were picked up.

The police confiscate all their belongings, including blankets and clothing. Around here, these unfortunate souls are robbed by police, almost as often as they are by other homeless, both seem with nefarious intent. It's awful. I have a few locals who camp in the area behind our place. I probably help more with spare cash and buying them food, than any of the police here. The police assigned are called The Livibility Team, or something like that. Ridiculous.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

8. Will the MAGAts be detained?

They're crazy.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

17. This is a horrifying, violent policy that is yet another way to give cops money and power, and will

result in people getting hurt and killed. Involuntary hospitalization is not "help."

[berniesandersmittens]

19. +1

Mental illness is not a crime. Send councelors and doctors, not the police.

[brooklynite]

20. And when the mentally ill person refuses to go?

[berniesandersmittens]

21. I didn't say take them

I said send help to them.

[brooklynite]

24. And when the mentally ill person refuses the help?

[MerryBlooms]

36. Then leave them alone. If they're not a danger to the public,

Keep your hands off them. My tax dollars are going to bogus homeless policies. It's funding to further dehumanize the homeless and mentally ill. It's a crime in our town to have a shopping cart. Yep, that's some help for these folks. Fine them, take their belongings... Now what? Homeless are still homeless, but without their tarp, blankets, clothing, etc... Barbaric policies!

[brooklynite]

39. "if they're not a danger to the public"

is the underlying point. The population perceives them as potentially dangerous, especially those that rant on the sidewalk or threaten people in the subway. And that includes working class folks (hence the reason Eric Adams was elected). Waiting until they ARE a danger isn't a solution.

[MerryBlooms]

40. Ranting on sidewalks isn't a crime, it's free speech.

Threatening people in the subway? Verbally or physically? You hear all sorts of threatening language on public transit. How about couples where one or the other threatens? You call on that too, or just mind your own business? Words can be scary, rarely is it a crime.

When is trump going to be arrested for his words? There was a storming of our Capitol, and according to many, trump's words caused that hellish day. Free speech, or fomenting insurrection?

[Phoenix61]

23. It's not up to them. It's up to the admitting physician.

This is nothing but a bullshit publicity stunt so he can claim he tried to do something to address the problem while knowing damn well that’s a flat out lie.

[eissa]

25. Really hope CA implements this policy

Unfortunately, homeless advocates/enablers here will fight it tooth and nail. Better to leave them on the streets.

[ZonkerHarris]

26. Better for America to just arrest all the bankers on Wall Street instead.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

28. I need to stop being surprised by how many people are fans of criminalizing poverty.

[MerryBlooms]

37. It's a feature not a bug, and a big money maker for many police depts.

There is a gal who lives somewhere in the woods behind our place. She has a little dog. I hear him only once in a while, probably when someone is coming close to her camp. When I see them, I always give to her and then buy deli meats for them. She never speaks to me, but I get that, and it doesn't matter. She's a long way from the food bank out here. Folks just need to remember, it could be me, you, us... No judgments necessary. It's a brutal world out there. I have no idea what they go through every day, I just know it's horrible, and I'm grateful I can do a little bit sometimes. If we all did a little bit sometimes, it would go way further than a lot of the supposed Livibility police stuff, just my thoughts on it.

[brooklynite]

41. "Homeless" doesn't equate to "mentally ill"

[Celerity]

43. Why? DU's a somewhat conservative board socioeconomically in terms of some active posters.

[Stinky The Clown]

38. This is a tough issue but this seems a good, humanitarian way forward

Not sure how the NYC program will work, but there also need to be safeguards against abuse. And medical supervision.

[Renew Deal]

42. This is going to be hard for the city to get right.

Even if they mean well. Many of the homeless are dealing with mental health issues but few are dangerous. Once people get scooped up, they will have difficulty escaping the system. Also, why put this on the police? Their jobs are hard enough.