The city directive states that “unawareness or delusional misapprehension of surroundings” or “delusional misapprehension of physical condition or health” could be grounds for hospitalization.
The effort will also involve an increase in the use of Kendra’s Law, which lets courts mandate outpatient treatment for those who are a danger to themselves or others and which was expanded by Albany lawmakers in April.
Frequently, homeless people with severe mental illness are brought to hospitals, only to be discharged a few days later when their conditions improve slightly. Mr. Adams said the city would direct hospitals to keep those patients until they are stable and discharge them only when there is a workable plan in place to connect them to ongoing care
So I'm not entirely sure how getting checked in against your will works, who gets the bill for that and at what point do they consider you to be 'stable'?
Its already not that hard to get committed in NYC. Cops, EMS and crisis teams can take you in under various sections (can't remember the others but its section 9.41 for cops). When you get taken to a psych ER, a doc assesses you and can put you on a 1PC (14 day hold), then another doc can see you and it becomes a 2PC (60 day hold).
You don't actually have to do anything particularly violent or dangerous, they just need to consider you mentally ill and unable to care for yourself that places you at risk of imminent harm. It's the appeal judges that are a bit more strict about the "risk to self or others" thing. I think the NYPD just turn a blind eye to obviously chronic folk who aren't actively assaulting people.
I got committed to Bellevue earlier this year and I might have been a bit erratic, but definitely wasn't aggressive or suicidal. Just didn't sleep for a while and then abandoned my car in a car wash lol. When the cops picked me up I just happened to be covered in pink foam, which I think I explained poorly.
I feel like there's a bunch of other shit that could have happened first before going on about hospitalizing people against their will?
Yeah, they've got Kendra's law to do "assisted outpatient treatment" (assisted = forced). Tbh, that's what they should be expanding. And Adams has said that it should be more widely used, and all inpatients should be screened.
They gonna need to build some big ass hospitals tho. You can't walk a block in the Village without someone screaming at the clouds that a succubus raped them and replaced their retinas with cameras. This whole city is mentally ill.
