����������

 Alliance Alert: In her 2025 State of the State Address yesterday, Governor Hochul outlined her vision for addressing ����������’s mental health crisis. While we commend the Governor for emphasizing planned investments in proven community service solutions—such as expanding Intensive and Sustained Engagement Teams (INSET), increasing the reach of Clubhouse programs, and providing Peer Bridger programs to more hospitals—the Alliance for Rights and Recovery is deeply troubled by the significant focus on increasing involuntary inpatient and outpatient commitment in her mental health agenda.

Forced treatment measures have not been shown to effectively address the systemic issues within our mental health system and can often push individuals further away from the care they need. Instead, ���������� must prioritize voluntary, community-based services that empower individuals, support recovery, and strengthen our communities.

The Alliance, alongside other statewide advocates, will continue to work closely with legislative leaders to ensure that ���������� builds on the Governor and Legislature’s historic investments by increasing funding for effective services and strategies to address the mental health crisis. We will strongly oppose any pushes for increased reliance on involuntary commitment measures.

Together, we can build a mental health system that prioritizes dignity, recovery, and community safety for all ����������ers. Stay tuned for updates on how you can join our advocacy efforts as the legislative session continues, such as attending our upcoming regional forums and coming to Albany for the  on March 4^th.

See below to read Alliance CEO Harvey Rosenthal’s response to the State of the State address as well as some responses from legislative leaders and advocates.

A Response to Governor Hochul’s State of the State Address
By Harvey Rosenthal, CEO, Alliance for Rights and Recovery
January 14, 2025

Over the past 2 years, Governor Hochul and the Legislature have made landmark investments in enhancing and expanding services to promote healthier people and safer communities.  Today, we were listening for another round of investments and welcome the increases in peer-to-peer INSET outreach programs, peer bridgers who will support hospitalized people to make successful community transition and plans to bring state of the art community-based clubhouses back to upstate ����������.

At the same time, we are deeply troubled about proposals to significantly increase the use of involuntary hospitalization and outpatient services mandates. These polices single out, scapegoat, and sweep away the rights and dignity of our neighbors with mental illness.

Our Alliance for Rights and Recovery are fervidly opposed to the use of coercion:

• Coercion drives people away rather than drawing them into services.
• It will erode the ability to trust staff that is essential to the formation of successful helping relationships
• Hospitalizations are not proven to help people well, given the extraordinary numbers of people who return many times each year.
• Further, overwhelmed NYC hospitals do not have the capacity to take in the number of increased involuntary admissions that City and State governments are seeking.
• Coercion doesn’t provide people with food, shelter and clothing or greater access to staff who frequently leave for another better paying job
• More outpatient treatment orders will move mandated individuals to the front and, at the time, long suffering people in need will have to wait longer.
• It appears that the additional funding for enhanced voluntary services will be used more for monitoring and supervision rather to expand voluntarily access to new services.

Governor Hochul and Legislative Leaders can take strong action that will go a long way further to helping promote health, recovery and safe communities for all by taking the means to maximize the impact of all these new and existing services.

They should put in place strong state oversight measures to increase access to and performance by engaging, effective, well-coordinated and accountable services, via the use of Incident Review Panels to promptly investigate tragic instances of harm to people with mental illnesses and the general public, and to put in place corrective actions aimed at preventing future tragedies. The Panels were authorized in , but have never been implemented.

Responses from Legislative Leaders and Advocates

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie������
“We have to deal with the mental health crisis,” Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly speaker, said. “But this is another one where I always say to you: The hell is in the details.” He supports the effort but has said that many Democrats will not want to infringe on homeless individuals’ civil rights.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins������ Politico
Democrats are not yet ready to embrace an expansion of involuntary hospitalization for people with severe mental illnesses — a proposal that’s meant to boost subway safety after headline-grabbing crimes in recent weeks.

“We are not ignoring the crisis, but if we have no place to direct people, it is a problem as well,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins told reporters on Monday. “So we have to continue on all fronts to make sure that not only are people cared for as needed, but there are resources for that as well”

Legal Aid Society������
“Waiting for those with serious mental illness to reach a breaking point, forcibly hospitalizing and medicating them, and then releasing them back into the community only to repeat the cycle fails to address public safety or meet the needs of people with mental illness,” the group said in a statement.

“Instead, as the governor also suggests, we should increase access to outpatient services and invest in models like Assertive Community Treatment teams, which meet people where they are and provide direct support.”

The Alliance for Rights and Recovery in
“We are really rushing to put in policies without considering what the overall system looks like,” said Luke Sikinyi, director of public policy and public engagement for the Alliance for Right and Recovery, who opposes Ms. Hochul’s push on this front.