The New York State Department of Mental Health is in compliance with state law requiring people in mental health crises to receive treatment in a timely manner, according to an audit report released Thursday by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's office. They say treatment needs to be better supervised.
Known as Kendra's Law, the state provides court-ordered outpatient assisted treatment (AOT) to people with serious mental illnesses who pose a danger to themselves or others and whose treatment history meets certain criteria. I admit it.
According to the audit, under the Kendra Act, local governments had conducted around 47,000 investigations till August 2023. Of the 33,847 treatment applications submitted, 96% were approved. Local mental health authorities are supposed to investigate the referrer in a timely manner, but the period for this investigation is undetermined, the comptroller said. Using a benchmark of six months, the auditor found that almost half of his investigations (19 of his 41 cases sampled) took longer, and five of his investigations took more than two years. It turns out.
Auditors said they found that information was often incomplete and poorly communicated when important events related to these individuals occurred, such as becoming homeless or being arrested. DiNapoli said health care providers are required to report such incidents to local authorities within 24 hours to prevent any negative impact on treatment.
“Kendra's Law was created to ensure that people with serious mental illnesses receive treatment to prevent them from harming themselves or others,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “In many cases, programs work, but when they lapse, the consequences can be deadly, as our audit shows. [Office of Mental Health] At a time when we are facing a serious mental health crisis, we must implement our recommendations to improve the administration of Kendra Law. ”
Those recommendations are:
- Establish time period guidelines to serve as a baseline for local authorities and field offices to complete investigations.
- Considering collecting data on how long it takes to connect individuals to court-ordered services
- Improve reporting on important events to better capture and share information
- Increased assurance that local authorities take appropriate steps to renew services as necessary before they expire to avoid lapses in treatment and monitoring;
In its response to the audit, the Department of Mental Health generally agreed with its recommendations and said it would develop guidelines to define “timely” completion of AOT investigations.
Kendra's Law is named after Kendra Webdale, a Fredonia native who died in 1999 after being shoved in front of a subway train by a man who was said to be psychotic.
