Alliance Alert: A very timely message from former Assembly Mental Health Chairman Steven Sanders, who was the lead sponsor of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1993 that played a historic role in redirecting significant funding to community services from the closure of 5 New York’s state hospitals. Today, OMH operates 24 hospitals, which is equivalent to the combined number of state hospitals in Texas (10), Illinois (7) and West Virginia (7). To be continued….
Expanding Involuntary Commitment Won’t Make Us Safer
By Steven Sanders Albany Times Union January 30, 2025
After a number of well-publicized attacks and killings in the past year, particularly in New York City, involving people with serious untreated mental illness, Gov. Kathy Hochul has proposed expanding the involuntary commitment laws. These laws allow us to preemptively lock up potentially dangerous people with mental illness.
No question: These crimes are unsettling, and the fear they generate is very real. However, the involuntary commitment law is the least effective way to deal with violence committed by the mentally ill. It’s a political response to an issue that requires a clinical answer. It’s an inexpensive solution and it sounds good in a press release. But in reality, it won’t keep the public much safer.
The presumption is that potentially violent persons can be identified and remanded to a psychiatric facility without their consent for a period of time before they act out. But many troubled individuals do not have a trail of mental illness episodes that can be identified and acted upon before violence happens. It’s impossible to know in advance when a person might stop taking their meds, or when a person may have a psychotic episode with no apparent warning signs.
It would be far better, but admittedly more expensive, to examine whether the state is fulfilling its obligation to provide adequate support through community-based treatment opportunities, as a 1993 law required, or whether there are effective discharge plans and follow-up for those who may have been hospitalized. Sadly, in a budget with nearly $10 billion in new spending, the governor’s proposals fail to expand community-based mental health programs in a way that could make a difference.
Certainly, we can take this opportunity to reexamine New York’s involuntary commitment rules and see if they should be strengthened. But to really do something meaningful to help those in crisis and better safeguard the public will take far more than what the governor is proposing.
Steven Sanders of Troy served in the state Assembly from 1978 to 2006. During his tenure he chaired the Mental Health Committee.