https://www.city-journal.org/de-blasio-thrivenyc-mental-health-plan?utm_source=Bigger+Apple&utm_campaign=
DJ Jaffe is author of Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill, executive director of Mental Illness Policy Org. and an adjunct fellow at Manhattan Institute.
Mayor de Blasio and his wife Chirlane McCray, who serves as his mental-wellness czar, just announced an additional goal for ThriveNYC, their signature $850 million, multiyear mental-health plan: “Reach People with the Highest Needs.” One might think that that priority would have been part of the original plan. In any case, it’s a hollow promise: a close reading of the 2020–2022 ThriveNYC spending plan and “Progress Report” makes it clear that the de Blasio administration will continue to send money to ineffective programs, while giving short shrift to programs that reduce homelessness, arrests, and incarceration of the seriously mentally ill. The mayor and his wife justify the continuing ThriveNYC boondoggle by reporting meaningless and misleading statistics.
Over the last four years, de Blasio and McCray regularly insisted that ThriveNYC was helping the seriously mentally ill. In 2019, McCray told an incredulous city council that 100 percent of ThriveNYC’s funds are used for the seriously ill. The real figure is well short of that mark. New York City Council Speaker Cory Johnson says that only 13 percent of the program’s funds go to the seriously mentally ill. Gary Belkin, the program’s first director, pegged the figure at 19 percent; Susan Herman, ThriveNYC’s current head, says that in 2022 it will go up to 26 percent.
