New York City to start hospitalizing more mentally ill people involuntarily
Category: News & Politics
Via: vic-eldred • 2 years ago • 36 commentsBy: Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech (The Hill)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) revealed a new plan Tuesday to remove people with severe, untreated mental illness from city streets and subways.
Under the plan, New York City agencies would be able to involuntarily hospitalize people who appear to be mentally ill and are a threat to themselves, even if they do not pose a risk to others around them.
In a Tuesday press conference, Adams directed city agencies such as the New York Police Department and emergency responders to bring the mentally ill to hospitals for extended emergency care.
Adams said that the city has a "moral obligation" to help those with severe mental illness get the "treatment and care" they need.
"The common misunderstanding persists that we cannot provide involuntary assistance unless the person is violent, suicidal or presenting a risk of imminent harm," Adams said.
"This myth must be put to rest. Going forward, we will make every effort to assist those who are suffering from mental illness and whose illness is endangering them by preventing them from meeting their basic human needs," he said.
Adams added that the city will continue to try to convince the street homeless suffering from mental illness to "accept help voluntarily."
Training for police officers, emergency medical services and other medical personnel will begin immediately, Adams said. But in a memorandum posted online, city officials said case law does not provide "extensive guidance" on removals for mental health evaluations.
According to the document, precedent does suggest a few circumstances that would support the claim that a person is unable to support their basic needs due to mental health issues, including "serious untreated physical injury, unawareness or delusional misapprehension of surroundings, or unawareness or delusional misapprehension of physical condition or health."
In New York City, homeless people with mental illness are often brought to hospitals and discharged a few days later once their condition improves slightly, Adams said in the press conference.
Under the new plan, hospitals will be told to keep those patients longer and release them only when a long-term plan for their care has been settled, The New York Times reported.
"When we hospitalize those in crisis, it will be with a sense of mission to help them heal and to prepare them for an appropriate community placement," Adams added.
Adams's plan has drawn sharp criticism from some advocacy groups that question the legality and the efficacy of the new approach.
"The mayor is playing fast and loose with the legal rights of New Yorkers and is not dedicating the resources necessary to address the mental health crises that affect our communities, " said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman in a statement.
"The federal and state constitutions impose strict limits on the government's ability to detain people experiencing mental illness — limits that the mayor's proposed expansion is likely to violate. Forcing people into treatment is a failed strategy for connecting people to long-term treatment and care," Lieberman added.
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I think I finally found something to give Eric Adams credit for.
Chalk up one move for normalcy!
Step 2 needs to be keeping them away from the general public!
that sounds like an pretty effective way of dealing with election and insurrection deniers...
How about inflation, crime and open border deniers?
A Democrat isn't going to round up other Democrats. That's how they get "suicided" while in PC.
Yeah, if only someone like that suddenly became the leader of the Democrats in the House.
Oh, damn, wait just a minute.......................
What could possibly go wrong???
Can they go to Chicago and pick up Lori Lightfoot?
The sad fact is that our 4 largest cities elect people like Lori Lightfoot.
Very true!
Comment was removed as off topic and no value as was the response to this comment. Please stay on topic [ph]
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It's amazing how on simple article about the Mayor of NY doing something positive and good for the people of his city, there are a bunch of TDS suffering fools who have to make it about trump. FFS they should be more worried than trump about getting locked up for mental issues
And we treat them like they were serious people.
Not amazing.
SOP.
And here I thought the right’s most feared phrase was “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
That's because the lefts favorite line is " I'm from the government and I'm here to take care of you" Subtext is, because you are too stupid to take care of yourself, so the right is obviously afraid of the Government fucking up their lives, where the left embraces it because even the government is better than their judgement.
I’m from the left and that is not my favorite line. It’s not even in the top 1,000. The right otoh has embraced Ronald Reagan’s uttering ever since it fell out of his brain and landed on his tongue.
My personal favorite and still very, very relevant today is:
Coming from a senile old B-movie hack who based important decisions on astrology.
Sorry, but that rather accurate observation had nothing, nothing at all, to do with astrology.
But it is nice to see so many liberals intent on proving him right even today!
Actually, I think it was Nancy that was into astrology.
Where I work, we also lie and reply with, "And we're happy to have you".
... and they didn't think much of stop and frisk...
Scrubs was a great show!
This article made me think about mental hospital movies I've watched. Here are some: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Spellbound, David and Lisa, K-Pax, The Snake Pit, Awakenings and Shutter Island.
Hopefully AOC is the first one rounded up
So you have trouble differentiating heads exploding and ridicule I see.
Does New York City have 8,000,000 psychiatric beds available ?