New Yorkers have had enough with a dangerous and endless loop whereby obviously unstable people cycle through the courts, jails and hospitals, then wind up untreated and unhinged back on the streets and subways. They can hurt themselves and hurt, or even kill, others. Something can be done and needs to be done.
Proposed state legislation, the Supportive Intervention Act, would make it explicit, as it is in 47 other states, that someone can be forcibly transported and admitted to a hospital for psychiatric care — and possibly held for treatment thereafter — if their mental illness renders them unable to take care of themselves.
The problem is that the current state law is perceived by some to be vague, leading many practitioners to believe that even people who’ve been showing obvious signs of violent mental imbalance can’t be brought to a hospital or compelled into treatment unless they present an imminent threat of physical harm to themselves or others. That’s not what the law says.
The new bill makes it completely clear, referring to a “substantial inability to meet their own basic needs for food, clothing, shelter or medical care.” It’s sponsored by Democratic Assemblyman Ed Braunstein of Bayside and is strongly backed by Mayor Adams and Brian Stettin, his senior advisor on severe mental illness. Gov. Hochul needs to get behind the bill and help push it to passage when the new session of the Legislature convenes in January.
Too many so-called progressives who purport to speak on behalf of these sick individuals suggest that medication and hospitalization are curbs on people’s freedom. In fact, it’s the only honest path to their independence and self-sufficiency. Or, as writer Freddie deBoer — who himself has struggled with serious mental illness — has put it, “There is nothing progressive, nothing left-wing and nothing just about leaving people to die in filth in our subways.”
Letting people who need treatment and help — and whose mental illness makes them avoid treatment and help — linger on the streets is inhumane and unfair. It’s not only unfair to everyone trying to live, work and raise kids in this city; it’s unfair to those who wind up neglected rather than getting the liberating treatment that they desperately need.
This is for a small subset of those called “homeless.” Most of the nearly 150,000 people who lay their heads in shelters in this city are mothers, fathers and children whose primary reason for lacking a traditional roof over their heads is financial, being priced out.
But some of the single adults in this population are struggling with serious maladies, including addiction and mental illness. Indeed, it’s unclear whether a person one encounters crumpled up on sidewalks and subway benches, or sometimes shouting at or menacing other people in those spaces, in fact lacks a home. The primary thing with which they struggle is not between four walls; it’s between their two ears.
Supportive housing can help, but real medical care is needed for those with profound psychiatric problems. And too many of these sick people aren’t going to that care voluntarily, as they lack a fundamental ability to recognize and tend to their maladies. That’s part of the sickness. Help them get better and help all of us as well. Pass the Supportive Intervention Act.
