NY Times: Behind New York City’s Shift on Mental Health, a Solitary Quest

“The psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey has been advocating tougher involuntary psychiatric treatment policies for 40 years. Now it’s paying off.”

Excerpt:

“‘About 4 percent of violent acts can be directly attributed to mental illness, and many of them are low-level assaults, [said Jeff W. Swanson, a sociologist at the Duke University School of Medicine who has researched dangerousness,] things like pushing and shoving and slapping people.’ But the fear that followed catastrophic incidents proved powerful, politically.

“'[Psychiatrist Dr. E. Fuller Torrey] is a communicator — he wants to put information out there that moves hearts and minds and policymakers,’ Dr. Swanson said. He also worried, like other experts interviewed, that tougher commitment laws could work only if mental health services like psychiatric beds and clinical care were widely available, which they are not.

“‘It’s absolutely correct that we need to get severely mentally ill people off the streets and out of awful conditions and into some sort of care,’ said [psychiatrist Dr. John Talbott, a past president of the American Psychiatric Association and] who served as superintendent at Manhattan State Hospital, which is now Manhattan Psychiatric Center. ‘But we have destroyed the care system in large parts. So I don’t know how to do it overnight.’”

Read the full article.

Excerpted from Barry, E. (2022, December 11). Behind New York City’s Shift on Mental Health, a Solitary Quest. The New York Times.