Advocates for people with mental illnesses urged a federal judge Thursday to stop New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to force people from the streets and into mental health treatment.
They told Judge Paul A. Crotty in a court filing that the policy Adams announced on Nov. 29 dangerously expands an unlawful city policy permitting the involuntary detention of individuals who seem to have a mental illness.
Several organizations, including the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and the National Alliance on Mental Illness of NYC, said action was needed to stop large scale involuntary hospitalizations.
The court filing included an account of one individual plaintiff who said that since the mayor’s announcement, he has lived in constant fear that he will be forcibly hospitalized again after suffering involuntary hospitalizations at least three times in the past.
Matt Kudish, chief executive of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of NYC, said in a release that the request was made in a year-old lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s role responding to people with mental illnesses. The lawsuit seeks to remove police officers as first responders for those requiring health care.
“We felt the need to take further legal action to halt sweeping involuntary hospitalizations and prevent further harm towards New Yorkers living with serious mental illness and their families,” Kudish said.
The city’s law office defended the plan in a statement released by a spokesperson.
“Mayor Adams’ compassionate plan to connect New Yorkers with severe mental illness to support and care, fully complies with federal and state law, and we look forward to making our case before the court,” the statement said.
No court hearing was immediately scheduled in the matter.
Marinda van Dalen, an attorney with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, said: “New York City’s reliance on the police as first responders when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis has already resulted in police killings of too many people, the majority of whom are Black or other people of color.”
When Adams announced his plan at a news conference, he said he had directed police and city medics to be more aggressive in getting severely mentally ill individuals off the streets and subways and into treatment.
He called it a “moral obligation to act.”
But civil rights groups and advocates for the homeless said the mayor was likely to trample on New Yorkers’ rights while using a strategy that had failed in the past.
State lawmakers have been considering legislation to widen diversion programs for the mentally ill, a move supported by public defender groups.
(AP)
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6 Responses
Involuntary commitment is traumatic. It rarely if ever helps. If these people are so poor that they are homeless, how exactly are they affording a hospital stay? If the government has the money to help them help guide them to supportive housing and outpatient programs. They exist, are they unaffordable to most, yes.
It’s straight up abuse of power to Involuntarily commit individuals.
It the past, relied on involuntary commitment. When they got rid of it did succeed in substantially reducing the number of mentally ill who were unable to care for themselves (since they tended die in a short time). Appointing guardians to take responsibility for the insane, even if it means forcing them to give up living on the street and depriving them of the freedom that comes with being homeless, is humane but is not a cost-effective solution.
peacho you sound like a liberal. these people are INCAPABLE of making decisions they are a hard to society and themselves.
he can start with Kanye west and his buddy. and then maybe himself
Peacho:
” It’s straight up abuse of power to Involuntarily commit individuals. ”
And the city not taking the mentally ill off the streets is shirking it’s responsibility to all its other citizens.
Peacho, these people are not homeless because they’re poor, they’re homeless because they’re crazy, and they’re also poor because they’re crazy. They don’t need “supportive housing and outpatient programs”, they need to be taken off the street, because they are a danger to the public.