Everybody’s problem: Lack of mental health stabilization is a public hazard

Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News
·2 min read

It’s now a familiar story: a horrific crime jolts the city, followed by the arrest of someone who seems to have a tenuous grip on reality, followed by revelations that they had been hospitalized and released or cycled through Rikers, followed by recriminations and, finally, stopgap solutions.

The most recent iteration is the death of FDNY EMS Capt. Alison Russo late last month at the hands of Peter Zisopoulos. Zisopoulos, who has been described by relatives as schizophrenic, is an outlier in that he had “only” been involuntarily hospitalized once, in 2018, after harassing Asian New Yorkers on the street.

Many others in this mold had spent years cycling through a tour of jails, hospitals and the streets. Martial Simon, who pushed Michelle Go to her death in the Times Square subway station this past January, had spent about three decades struggling with schizophrenia and been in and out of hospitals about 20 times, even once warning a psychiatrist that he might push someone in front of a train.

Because of our collective failure to heed that warning and act on it, Go paid with her life. Because of our inability to shift approaches even after that, Russo paid with her life. How many more are we willing to let suffer?

A true solution begins with much more aggressive use of Kendra’s Law, the statute — passed in the wake of the 1999 subway-push killing of Kendra Webdale by Andrew Goldstein — empowering courts to order involuntary outpatient treatment for those deemed a risk to themselves or others.

We simultaneously need more psychiatric beds where those who will only respond to inpatient treatment can get that when in crisis.

Jurisdictions like Miami have already helpfully pioneered successful models, creating stabilization centers that take responsibility of potentially dangerous patients’ treatment. We need them here.

Only coordinated systems can get seriously mentally ill people with a propensity to violence — which, to be crystal clear, isn’t most mentally ill people — the help they, and all of us, need.