Partnership seeks to strengthen mental health services
Each month, 340,000 New Yorkers – 5.3 percent of the population – experience serious psychological distress, according to New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Many of those individuals are low-income, uninsured, or receiving public insurance. And, in 2013, about 23 percent of those experiencing distress reported a time in the prior year that they needed mental health services but did not receive it.
To better reach these individuals, New York City announced in July a $30 million public-private partnership to better serve low income, at-risk populations who have limited access to mental health services.
“I have talked with concerned New Yorkers in every borough and they have been loud and clear about the intensity of our mental health care crisis,” said New York City’s First Lady Chirlane McCray in a news release about the partnership.
“Over and over, people told me how tough it was to travel outside of their communities and how much they would prefer to receive services from those who understand their culture. Trust and familiarity matter a great deal with a sensitive, complicated issue like mental health.”
The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City and the Corporation for National and Community Service are collaborating with the Center for Economic Opportunity and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to implement Connections to Care, a program that aims to expand access to these individuals by integrating mental health services with other programs that serve these communities, according to the release.
The idea is to train staff to screen for common mental health and substance use disorders, in motivational interviewing, in Mental Health First Aid, and in psycho-education, says the release. “Research suggests that many evidence-based interventions for common mental health conditions can be performed by non-mental health workers.”
Mental Health First Aid training helps staff identify issues earlier, said Anna Reyna, LCSW, clinical supervisor at The Door Counseling Department in New York, which has been training its staff in Mental Health First Aid for the past two years. “In this way, more people are aware and can help support each other in making a plan for connecting clients to more formal mental health services, substance abuse services, day treatment or inpatient care,” she said.
The press conference to announce the new partnership was held at The Door, an organization that has worked since 1972 to help a diverse and growing population of disconnected youth in New York City with a range of services including mental health counseling and crisis assistance, legal assistance, tutoring and homework help, career development, job training and placement.
“Making additional trainings available to more staff could make our profession stronger, could help with identification of mental health and substance abuse issues earlier, and hopefully help with referrals to more formal, structured clinical interventions and treatment, when the client is ready to take that step,” Reyna said.
The Door is considering applying for program funding from the partnership. The Mayor’s Fund will select programs to participate in the program.
The partnership was awarded an initial $6 million, five-year grant for the program and will be eligible for another $4 million for the fourth and fifth years, according to the release. The grant from the Social Innovation Fund of The Corporation for National and Community Services, will be matched by $20 million from other funding sources, including the Mayor’s Fund and others.
Funding will also be used to study the impact of the Connection to Care program and track the experiences for those who provide and receive services.
The announcement of this partnership follows the launch of the city’s Mental Health Roadmap effort to envision and implement reforms in mental health care delivery.