How NYC can best respond to mental health crises

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has taken on numerous efforts to tackle mental health, as part of a plan his administration released aiming to improve mental health for young people, people with serious mental illness and people at risk of drug overdoses. The Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health plays a key role supporting that work and coordinating between the myriad city agencies involved in that work. Eva Wong has served as the office’s executive director for the past two years, bringing with her more than 15 years of experience in clinical services and mental health programs. City & State spoke with Wong about the office’s latest work, including its program to respond to mental health crises and the behavioral health workforce crisis. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

You’ve been in this position for over two years now. What have been some accomplishments you’ve had so far and what have been the biggest challenges?

I’m new in government, and I think it’s really exciting that I am leading this first-ever mayoral office that’s dedicated to mental health. My job coming in is to really understand the landscape, and our job as an office is to coordinate and develop policy citywide and strategies to fill critical gaps in mental health care. The goal is that we want to see more New Yorkers in every neighborhood have the support they need, and we want to have quality and equitable access to treatment.

I came from the nonprofit world, coming with this lens that there are many entryways to engage with New Yorkers. It’s really taking that community-rooted approach to mental health, and that’s what this office is, and setting strategic priorities for this office. The first one is improving access to mental health care and equitable distribution of resources. The second one is partnering with communities to elevate mental health promotion and community resilience.

The third one is being part of the crisis response with B-HEARD. We know in New York City, we have so many services in the mental health crisis response system, but they are not always talking to each other. Our office has really taken on a leadership role to develop a much more coordinated way to do response and building those relationships with all the stakeholders that might not always see eye-to-eye. You might have the big players, like (the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene) and Health + Hospitals, and, of course, part of the system is NYPD and FDNY and (the Department of Social Service)]. Then the last one is the behavioral health workforce crisis that the city is facing.

The goal really is – what are gaps and what isn’t being done and what isn’t being done well enough. Then we would be in those places as a thought partner with agencies. Sometimes you have players who might not traditionally be doing mental health, for example (the Taxi and Limousine Commission). The commissioner and I had conversations about what it’s like to support the taxi drivers and black car drivers who we know have a high suicide rate. So in the last year, we were able to start working with Health + Hospitals to put together a way to engage with drivers and now connect them to an express care line that they can call anytime 24/7.

What role has the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health played in supporting the city’s plan to improve mental health for youth, people with serious mental illness and people at risk of drug overdoses?

I want to highlight two that were most intimately involved in. I already mentioned B-HEARD, where we are really the leaders in it and it is involving FDNY and Health + Hospitals. The program itself has continued to expand to 31 precincts across Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn – it’s not in Staten Island yet. The quality and the data, all of that we’re involved in, and lessons learned. How is that working? How can we continue to connect people to community-based care when they might not really need the hospitalization?

Another thing that I mentioned is the workforce. We need to strengthen the existing workforce, including really structural changes to enable both advanced clinical and nonclinical staff to work at the top of the licensure. That will affect quality service provision, because a lot of social workers might be doing intake and other things that don’t require them to have that licensure. We are rightsizing that and talking to a lot of stakeholders including (the Department of Citywide Administrative Services) and the union. We’re also enhancing community resilience by investing in upskilling capacity building with small and BIPOC-led (community-based organizations).

Have you been involved with City Hall’s efforts to involuntarily hospitalize homeless people who are deemed to have serious mental illness? If so, how well is that effort working so far?

I’m coming from a clinician standpoint. I know it was really controversial, and what I can speak to is we come together regularly, a few times a month, to drill down into what is happening to individuals – not just looking at a system – but looking at people who are suffering. There is a lot of care that goes into it. We know data is important, that the public is interested with that. We’re working on those, and that will be coming in January next year, as the local law requires us to do.