New York, NY – The city will end its mental health service by October, a move that will force the closure of more than 60 psychiatric hospitals and medical facilities, including those in the Bronx, Harlem, and Staten Island, New Yorkers for Mental Health and Law said.
The state has also been forced to close nearly 200 mental health facilities across the state since March, when the Trump administration shut down a program that reimbursed hospitals for treating mentally ill patients.
New York’s mental health care system was once the envy of the country, but it has fallen behind in recent years, and state lawmakers recently approved $300 million to help New York expand its mental healthcare system.
New Yorkers for Mental Health and law, which advocates for mental health treatment in the state, released a report earlier this month calling for more mental health professionals to be trained in the basics of how to treat people with mental illness, like identifying the causes of mental illness and diagnosing them.
The New York Public Library has been operating for the last 20 years, but its staff will be reduced to 10.
The program, which includes more than 1,500 mental health workers and mental health clinics across the city, will be shut down by October as the state and federal governments close their offices.
“This is not about keeping the city safe.
This is about keeping people safe,” said Mary Ann Farr, executive director of New York for Mental Heath.
“We have no choice but to shut down.”
The mental health system in the city was built in the 1950s, but New York State began taking over the operation of mental health in 2005.
According to a statistical analysis published by the state on Monday, the New York system had an overall psychiatric population of 3.7 million people in 2016.
That number is expected to grow to 4.2 million by 2022.
New York has the second highest rate of new psychiatric admissions in the country at 3.2 new patients per 100,000 residents, after Florida, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Mental health services in New York are often not well equipped for treating people with chronic mental illnesses.
At least 10% of the people who enter a mental health clinic in New Yorkers are diagnosed with mental health conditions, according a report by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Farr and others in the advocacy group say the cuts to mental health will make it harder for people to get treatment and will lead to longer waits at the emergency rooms.
Many people with untreated mental illness in the community, who are mentally ill and struggling to get the help they need, are homeless, said Farr. In March, the state announced that the state’s Mental Hospital Authority will close its doors.
If the program closes by October and it’s not reopened by the end of October, that will leave at least 2,000 people without treatment, according to Farr and mental health advocates.
There is a $100 million emergency funding plan in the works to cover the cost of closing the psychiatric hospitals.