Mental Health Roadmap to Focus on City Agenda Goals
Capital Pro; Clifford Michael, 6/30/2015
Several months before its release, the details of the city’s “Mental Health Roadmap” have yet to be worked out. What’s known is that the plan will focus heavily on identifying mandates for city agencies to address mental health issues.
Gary Belkin, executive deputy commissioner for mental hygiene at the city health department, said a large part of the roadmap will be focused on giving city agencies directions through the “key elements” introduced earlier this month at a town hall in the Bronx by health officials and first lady Chirlane McCray.
The roadmap’s five key elements seek to make use of technology to collect and analyze data on mental health issues, focus on mental health prevention and early identification for those at greatest risk, and close treatment gaps. It also emphasizes the importance of partnering with local groups and generally providing resources for more individuals, places and organizations.
“It’s going to be less a laundry list of 50 things were going to fund—it’s really how we should think about funding,” Belkin told Capital after a town hall on mental health issues at Queens Borough Hall. “There will be some initiatives that will be announced with it but it’s more [exemplifying] those new directions. … We’re really putting the emphasis on what city agencies can do in these five areas.”
Roughly 70 people attended the event in Queens on Monday and nearly 20 spoke. Of particular concern at the meeting was the question of how the city will reach out to LGBTQ, Asian, and Hispanic communities, who, participants testified, tend to not know about available mental health services, or to use them very often.
“Here we heard a lot about undocumented populations and really complex segmentations around different linguistic and cultural groups,” Belkin told Capital. “It’s not that we weren’t aware of that, but it really brought it to our forefront.”
Participants also revisited familiar themes from several other town hall meetings in other boroughs, including peer support, supportive housing, ad campaigns to reduce stigma and increased funding for local services.