Thank you NYS Senate Mental Health Committee Chair Senator Samra Brouk for your ever long and strong support in authorizing and hailing new study findings underscoring the effectiveness of voluntary mental health services and in being a resolute supporter of our many campaigns to oppose expansions of the use of coercion!
Thanks too for your great leadership as sponsor of Daniel’s Law and related pilots being launched across our state that will send out peer/mental health and EMT workers in place of police to respond to people in crisis.
We look forward to your strong support in a consideration of Kendra’s Law that will reject the use of involuntary outpatient treatment orders in next year’s legislative session!
Here’s the statement that Senator Brouk posted on Facebook last week:
“As Chair of the Senate Mental Health Committee, I have long fought to expand voluntary mental health services in NYS. When changes were made to New York State’s Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) Program, I stood by mental health advocates and fought for an independent review of these court mandated services. Now, initial results from this report released by the Office of Mental Health reveal voluntary services greatly improve outcomes for individuals who need mental health services.
As we continue to review these findings, I encourage everyone to read the report to learn how evidence-based interventions can provide transformative care for those who need it most. My office will continue to work with OMH and advocates to determine how we can best implement recommendations from the report to protect individuals in our mental health system.
Read the report: https://omh.ny.gov/…/statistics/NYS-AOT-Final-Report.pdf