Samra Brouk is ready to advance mental health care in the next session

State Sen. Samra Brouk has made mental health a cornerstone of her legislative work. After Daniel Prude’s death in Rochester sparked nationwide outrage about police treatment of people in mental health crises, Brouk introduced Daniel’s Law, a bill that would shift mental health response away from police departments across the state. That legislation is one of many mental health issues she has championed in office, including maternal mental health screenings and investments in the mental health workforce. City & State caught up with Brouk to learn more about her priorities for the next legislative session and her view of the governor’s mental health plan. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

What do you make of the governor’s $1 billion mental health plan and the impact it has had so far?

First of all, I think it’s really, really exciting and encouraging that we have a governor who talks about mental health as much as Gov. (Kathy) Hochul does. The fact that, for the last two years, it has taken significant space in her State of the State addresses, which proves that this is a priority for her, and then backing that with this billion dollar added investment. I think now we are in a position where we want to make sure that funding is reaching the people who need it most.

What needs to be done to make sure funding is going to the people who need it most?

One of the first things I learned when I became chair of the Senate Mental Health Committee was the fact that our mental health workforce had not received a cost-of-living increase in their wages in over a decade. In 2021, we were fighting for some amount of increase, still within the COVID pandemic and the understanding that mental health needs were skyrocketing. We were able to get the first cost-of-living adjustment that year and, every year since, we have fought to get an increase. I’m happy that the governor has been supportive of that for the last few years. We’ll be looking to grow on that again this year. There’s a few policies that I think we need to look at. One of them is legislation that I hold that would actually tie these cost-of-living adjustments to inflation to make sure that we’re able to retain people and that they can continue to pay for their basic needs. We have our Social Worker Workforce Act that will actually remove some of the requirements around a licensing exam that has been found to have incredibly disparate outcomes based on race.

We still need to look at how we’re dealing with mental health crisis. Passing Daniel’s Law is going to be very important, which obviously comes with a need for funding. We have to support localities in creating these mental health response units and mental health response plans for folks that are in crisis.

The third big thing is around youth mental health. Right now, we’re looking at trying to get signed into law the Student Lifeline Act, which would put 988, the crisis lifeline, on the back of all college IDs and have colleges across New York actually do awareness and education around them. The final thing with youth – I had proposed legislation for five free telehealth appointments. This is actually something I worked on with legislators in Colorado and the lieutenant governor out of Colorado. They offered free in-person or telehealth appointments for any school-age student who wanted it. They can go right online and access that care, and they paid competitive rates so that providers actually participated in it.

I’d seen that the state budget funded a pilot program inspired by Daniel’s Law. Are you keeping an eye on that and how that is affecting how you’re going to move forward on the legislation?

There are a few things that happened with our budget this year and last year. The biggest one is the fact that we were able to allocate a million dollars to the Daniel’s Law Task Force. That task force is currently meeting. We’re looking for recommendations on what a statewide rollout of Daniel’s Law could look like, and we’ve heard from the (state Office of Mental Health) commissioner that that is likely to happen this year – even though the legislation doesn’t call for it to be done until 2025 – so that’s encouraging.

There’s a lot of work to be done to make sure that those kinds of programs are built up all over the state, and that’s why Daniel’s Law is so necessary. But I am at least encouraged by the fact that people are starting to understand the necessity of something like Daniel’s Law, and that’s why more funding has been put into place.