The new state budget brings with it important changes to mental-health law that will benefit New York City.
Notably, Gov. Hochul pushed legislators to codify the idea that an inability to meet basic living needs — not just dangerousness — justifies involuntary hospitalization.
Police and other front-line personnel don’t have to wait for suicidality or a violent threat to develop.
Technically, cops already had the authority to intervene using the basic living-needs standard.
But that was based on an interpretation of state law.
Now New York state makes crystal clear that there can be no excuse not to act when someone is deteriorating in plain view because of untreated psychosis.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is a 2024-25 public scholar at the City College of New York’s Moynihan Center.
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