Evelyn Graham-Nyaasi knows what it’s like to be involuntarily committed for mental health treatment.
The Manhattan resident, who has bipolar disorder, recalled that in 2018, someone in her home accused her of threatening them with a knife and called the police.
“ The officer was like, ‘Do you wanna get in the police car or the ambulance?’” said Graham-Nyaasi, who denied having a knife. She said emergency responders took her to Bellevue Hospital, where she was held for more than a week.
“ I was locked up in the room where all these people were screaming and yelling,” she said. “There were no toilet seats, no doors, nothing. It was a horrible experience.”
Graham-Nyaasi is part of an ad hoc coalition of civil liberties lawyers, mental health providers and advocates speaking out against a proposal by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that would make it easier for authorities to involuntarily commit someone for mental health treatment. Opponents say it’s overreach and that voluntary treatment is more effective, while proponents say it’s a necessary tool to boost public safety and help homeless people with severe mental illness.
The debate is one of many fights taking place in Albany as state lawmakers hammer out a budget for the next fiscal year. Two key Democratic lawmakers are scheduled to join a rally opposing the proposal on Tuesday.
Police officers statewide now have the power to bring someone into treatment if, in their judgment, they appear mentally ill and are behaving in a manner likely to result in serious harm to themselves or others. Hochul says the legal standard should be broader, matching previous court rulings on when involuntary commitment is warranted.
“We need to expand involuntary commitment into a hospital that includes someone who does not have the mental capacity to care for themselves — such as refusing help for the basics, clothing, food, shelter, medical care,” the Democratic governor said during her State of the State address in January.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has also called for the law’s expansion, as have representatives of business improvement districts around the state. Tom Harris, a former NYPD officer and the president of the Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit focused on local businesses, said the proposal would help homeless people who have otherwise refused aid from outreach workers.
“If someone is lying, bleeding on the street, we get them help,” he said. “It is a societal failure when the presence of people on the street suffering with the disease of addiction and mental illness becomes normalized.”
But state lawmakers and civil rights advocates who oppose the proposal worry it could become a dragnet that applies to any homeless person, regardless of their mental health needs.
Norman Siegel, former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said Hochul’s proposal was overly broad and unnecessary. He represented Joyce Brown, a homeless woman known publicly as Billie Boggs who successfully challenged her involuntary commitment to Bellevue Hospital in 1987.
”The fact that someone doesn't have shelter by definition, if this becomes the law, they could pick everyone up immediately because they’re unhoused,” Siegel said.
Siegel and other mental health providers outlined another argument against the measure: Even if a stricter standard compelled more people to treatment, where would they go after they stabilize in a hospital?
Involuntarily committed homeless patients too often end up back on the streets rather than in supportive housing or community-based treatments, said Doug Cooper, interim executive director of the Association for Community Living, a statewide group representing organizations that provide housing and services to people with psychiatric disabilities.
“Right now, that system of care is fractured and suffering, and we don't have the resources to do what's necessary to meet those people's needs,” said Cooper. “ To change the standards without having the availability of quality services just doesn't make much sense. You can't do one without the other.”
He said the state should increase funding for organizations that provide care, which would let them open more beds and pay better wages to reduce staff turnover. Hochul proposed increasing spending on such contracts by 2.1% in her budget, but Cooper argued it should be closer to 8% to account for inflation.
During a February budget hearing, State Office of Mental Health Commissioner Ann Sullivan said the governor’s involuntary confinement plan was targeted at a small number of people with specific needs.
“There is room within the community-based hospital system for the small increase in individuals for the change in the involuntary-commitment law,” Sullivan said, adding that Hochul’s budget proposes significant investments across the mental health system.
Jim Walden, a lawyer and mayoral candidate who lives in Brooklyn, said he would like to see the state simultaneously change the standard and provide more funding. He has spoken publicly about his older sister Debbie’s struggles with mental illness, choosing to name her after she was killed while homeless. He said she had depression and received treatment at several institutions.
Medication was effective, Walden said, and his sister was able to get a job, maintain an apartment and find a boyfriend. But she would take her medicine erratically, and then not at all, he said.
Walden said he successfully pushed to have his sister involuntarily committed, and she was released after she was stabilized. In 2012, she ended up on the streets, got into a fight and died, he said.
“If we want to protect people, they can't be on the street,” Walden said. “There's got to be a legal system that requires them in these circumstances to stay and get the treatment that they need so that they can live, you know, as close to a normal life as possible.”