NYC receives about 500 911 calls a day for issues with emotionally disturbed people — but efforts to bolster the city’s emergency mental health response have slackened, according to a new report by public attorney Jumaane Williams.
The issue has focused heavily in post-pandemic New York amid widespread concern about the intersection between the city’s growing crime and mental illness.
“The impacts of the pandemic on our individual and collective mental health, the trauma experienced, have only heightened the need for systemic reform,” Williams wrote in the report. “The ongoing reflection on how we define and produce public safety has also highlighted the need to address this crisis holistically as a health issue, rather than just law enforcement.”
The report, which was released late last week and followed a similar report from 2019, found that while some areas of the city’s mental health infrastructure have strengthened, others have remained stagnant. – and even backtracked. The report called for an urgent response from the Adams administration to the city’s growing mental health crisis.
This year, the city has seen an increase in 911 calls involving emotionally disturbed people. This year has seen an 8% rise so far, with numbers around 131,200 this fall – around 500 a day, compared to around 128,500 in the same period of 2021.
New York has seen downgrades in its response to mental health emergencies, according to the report.
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Instead of increasing crisis respite centers, which are treatment centers for people in mental health emergencies that are alternatives to hospitals, their number has been cut in half. In 2019, there were eight respite centers in the city. Now there are four.
The number of mobile mental crisis response teams also decreased compared to 2019, from 24 to 19 teams in the five boroughs. Williams recommended that the hours for these teams be increased and that the process for reaching them be streamlined to a three-digit direct phone number not associated with the NYPD.
The report called on the city to divert more emergency mental health responses to trained mental health and behavioral experts, rather than a traditional police response.
He also touched on the city’s B-HEARD program, originally designed to do just that. However, in the first year of the pilot program, response times slowed, more people were hospitalized, and police involvement in cases intensified.
The report called on the city to make mental health professionals the default response to these emergencies, as well as improve dispatch training so more calls are routed to the appropriate teams.
“For those involved in the justice system and facing mental health issues, the answer is not additional policing or law enforcement involvement in the city’s mental health response” , wrote Williams.
The report praised the city for increasing its number of shelters from 5 in 2019 to 7 in 2022. The shelters provide homeless New Yorkers with a variety of services, including food services and workers social. The Adams administration also increased the number of shelter beds, which provide temporary housing with mental health and addictions support.
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