Mayor Adams Kicks Off “Mental Health Week” by Celebrating One Year of Behavioral Health Blueprint, $33 Million in Funding to Enhance City’s Behavioral Health Services

March 17, 2025

Newly-Announced $33 Million From New York State Behavioral Health 

Centers of Excellence Program Expands on $41 Million Investment from Last Year 

In First Year of Behavioral Health Blueprint, NYC Health + Hospitals Maximized Inpatient

Psychiatric Capacity, Expanded Outpatient Access, Increased Services for Special Populations    

WATCH: Mayor Adams Kicks Off “Mental Health Week”   

Adams Administration’s “Mental Health Week,” Will Highlight City’s 

Multi-Agency Efforts to Connect New Yorkers with Mental Health Services  

NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams and NYC Health + Hospitals President and CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz today kicked off “Mental Health Week” by celebrating accomplishments in the first year of the Adams administration’s comprehensive three-year plan — “Behavioral Health Blueprint: Turning Crisis into Opportunity” — to strengthen and expand its behavioral health services. The “2024 Behavioral Health Annual Progress Report ” details the advancement of initiatives to build capacity and resilience into the city’s behavioral health services and health workforce. Specifically, the report tracks progress — between 2024 and 2026 — across the blueprint’s six core strategies: restoring and maximizing inpatient capacity; expanding access to outpatient services; increasing services to special populations; enhancing social work, care management, and peer services; preventing violence and increasing safety; and building the behavioral health workforce. Mayor Adams also, today, celebrated another $33 million to support behavioral health from New York state’s Behavioral Health Centers of Excellence program, adding to the $41 million the program contributed last year. Additional funding includes opioid settlement funding, as well as city, state, federal, and philanthropic funds to improve the health of New Yorkers. This week, the Adams administration is celebrating “Mental Health Week,” highlighting the city’s multi-agency efforts to support New Yorkers efforts to address mental health, ranging from serious mental illness to expanding resources to underserved communities — all supporting Mayor Adams’ 2025 State of the City commitment to make New York City the best place to live and raise a family. 

Today’s announcement builds on the three-year plan announced last year: the “Behavioral Health Blueprint: Turning Crisis into Opportunity.” As the largest provider of behavioral health in New York City, NYC Health + Hospitals outlined six core strategies that guide its efforts to restore and maximize inpatient capacity; expand access to outpatient services; increase services for special populations; enhance social work, care management, and peer services; prevent violence and increase safety; and build the city’s behavioral health workforce.  

“Our administration has continued to deliver on our promise to invest in New Yorkers’ mental health, and as we kick off ‘Mental Health Week,’ I am proud to announce that, in just one year, NYC Health + Hospitals has expended its reach and brought even more compassionate and quality care to our communities — delivering on six core strategies in our ‘Behavioral Health Blueprint,’” said Mayor Adams. “I also want to thank the state for its investment in our public hospital system, so we can continue to bring critical services to some of our most vulnerable New Yorkers. Every day, we are working to make our city safer, more affordable, and the best place to raise a family, and by making real investments like these in mental and behavioral health, we are achieving that vision.”  

“NYC Health + Hospitals is proud to be the largest provider of behavioral health services in New York City, and we continue to invest in this work to support our patients and our providers,” said NYC Health + Hospitals President and CEO Dr. Katz. “Today’s report shows we have been busy over the last year opening new mental health units, hiring more staff, and supporting career development for our behavioral health workforce to enhance capacity across the system.” 

In its first year, NYC Health + Hospitals’ three-year Behavioral Health Blueprint delivered the following accomplishments: 

Restored and Maximized Inpatient Capacity:  

• Restored an additional 225 psychiatric beds that were closed since the COVID-19 pandemic for a current total of 1,060 online psychiatric beds, returning the psychiatric inpatient census to pre-pandemic levels. 
• Renovated seven inpatient behavioral health units, which included a total of 163 psychiatric beds. The renovations ensured that these units meet the highest level of patient safety required by recent state regulations. 
• Added several hundred inpatient psychiatric staff lines to inpatient units systemwide. 

Expanded Outpatient Access 

• Added over 70 staff lines to Adult Mental Health outpatient units to expand access, which has resulted in shorter wait times and an 88 percent overall patient satisfaction. 

Increased Services for Special Populations: Special populations include individuals with co-occurring substance use disorders, as well as those with intellectual or developmental disabilities; people experiencing homelessness; and children and adolescents.  

• Launched a new systemwide comprehensive Addiction Services Workforce Training Program to ensure that patients in all disciplines get assessment and treatment for Substance Use Disorder. 
• Launched the Emergency Department Buprenorphine Project, a multi-pronged approach that ensures patients with opioid use disorder who are treated in the emergency department are offered life-saving treatment.  
• Opening 16 new school-based mental health clinics to provide mental health services in schools across the Bronx and Central Brooklyn and provide connections to ongoing outpatient services. 
• Opened a third 20-bed Extended Care Unit at NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst to connect complex-need psychiatric patients with additional treatment and housing. This is third such unit systemwide with the other two being at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and Kings County. 

Enhanced Social Work, Care Management, and Peer Services 

• Launched the Social Work Training Academy to standardize training across the social work discipline at NYC Health + Hospitals for more than 1,000 social workers, strengthening practice and patient outcomes. 
• Hired over 100 new social workers as a result of a running a multi-platform campaign to recruit social workers, bringing the social work vacancy rate down to about 8 percent. 
• Received state funding to launch five new Critical Time Intervention teams that will provide outreach, engagement, and care coordination for individuals with mental illness who have struggled to connect with services after discharge from the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program or mental health inpatient care. 
• Reached two notable milestones for the health system’s Peer Academy: graduating over 100 peer counselors through the training program and placing 50 percent of the graduates in full-time employment positions at NYC Health + Hospitals since launch. In 2024, more than 30 new peer counselors were hired across the system. 

Prevented Violence and Increased Safety 

• Trained a total of 1,300 staff members system-wide in violence prevention intervention, including screening and assessment of high-risk patients, de-escalation techniques, and trauma-informed approaches — all contributing to building a culture of safety. 

Developed the Health System’s Workforce 

• Awarded $4 million in student debt relief to nearly 140 behavioral health clinicians employed in the system through the Behavioral Health Loan Repayment Program (BH4NYC). This was on top of the $1 million already awarded to staff in 2023. As of December 2024, the BH4NYC Loan Repayment Program provided student debt relief to 33 new staff and 109 incumbent staff who collectively reach about 87,920 patients annually. 
• Launched a Psychiatric Physician Assistance Career Pathways Program to improve system capacity, with specialized training for physician assistants, including behavioral health didactics, clinical rotations, and tuition assistance. 
• Introduced telepsychiatry in psychiatric emergency and inpatient settings to mitigate critical workforce capacity issues, decrease wait times, and rapidly stabilize patients. 
• Launched a multi-channel recruitment campaign focused on high-need disciplines, leading to a successful recruitment season, yielding over 330 new behavioral health hires across NYC Health + Hospitals’ 11 acute care facilities. 

Mayor Adams has been on the forefront of implementing successful interventions, major investments, and direct services for people struggling with mental illness. In January 2025, following a 2025 State of the City commitment, the Adams administration took unprecedented action to curb street homelessness and support people with severe mental illness by making a $650 million investment in the city’s most vulnerable populations. The Adams administration has also made the largest investment in New York City history in creating specialized shelter beds to address street homelessness. The city has opened 1,400 Safe Haven and stabilization beds since the start of the administration and doubled the number of street outreach teams. Additionally, the announcement included the unveiling of an innovative model, “Bridge to Home,” where NYC Health + Hospitals will offer a supportive, home-like environment to patients with serious mental illness who are ready for discharge from the hospital but do not have a place to go. By offering patients intensive treatment and comprehensive support, Bridge to Home aims to keep patients on a path toward sustained success, reducing unnecessary emergency room visits and inpatient hospitalizations, decreasing street homelessness and reliance on shelters, and lowering interactions with the criminal justice system.  

In February 2022, Mayor Adams first launched the Subway Safety Plan to address public safety concerns and support people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, including some of the city's hardest-to-reach New Yorkers experiencing mental health and substance use challenges on New York City's subways. Since the start of the plan, over 8,000 New Yorkers have been connected to shelter, with over 2,800 now in permanent, affordable housing. A key part of the Subway Safety Plan is the co-response programs, including the Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness (PATH) program, which brings together law enforcement and trained clinicians to conduct outreach on the subways. Since the beginning of PATH, the administration has contacted over 10,800 unhoused New Yorkers and delivered services to over 3,300 people. 

Mayor Adams has made mental health — including youth mental health — a key focus of his administration. In November 2023, Mayor Adams launched “NYC Teenspace,” a free tele-mental health service available to all New York City teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 years old at no cost. In the first six months after launching, 6,800 teenagers already signed up for the service with young people in underserved neighborhoods leading in utilizing the program and 80 percent of users identifying as Black, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islander, bi-racial or Native American. The launch and early success of NYC Teenspace delivers on a key commitment from Mayor Adams’ “Care, Community, Action: A Mental Health Plan for New York City,” released in March 2023.  

In addition to his mental health plan and the launch of NYC Teenspace, the Adams administration has filed a lawsuit to hold the owners of five social media platforms — TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube — accountable for their role in helping to fuel the nationwide youth mental health crisis and force tech giants to change their behavior. Mayor Adams also announced a Health Commissioner’s Advisory, identifying unfettered access to and use of social media as a public health hazard, just as past U.S. surgeons general have done with tobacco and firearms, and recommended parents delay initiation of social media for their child until at least age 14. 

Over 78,000 patients each year rely on NYC Health + Hospitals behavioral health services, giving the system a major role in caring for New Yorkers’ mental health and substance use treatment needs. With nearly 5,000 dedicated behavioral health staff members across 11 hospital systems and over 30 community health care centers, the system provides approximately 60 percent of behavioral health services in New York City. This includes services to high-needs and complex patient populations that can only be served through a public hospital system committed to serving all New Yorkers.