Governor Hochul: "I have a sense of urgency around this. I hope we all do. Because one more young person who thinks that everything is so hopeless, they decide to take their own life, that's not a tragedy for that individual and their family. It's a tragedy for society. It's an indictment on all of us that we weren't there to help somebody in need. That's not okay."
Hochul: "Never before has a State leaned this hard, this publicly into the issue of helping people deal with mental health challenges. So, I have said the era of ignoring mental health is over - declared it so. And we're going to lean hard into this There's not one place and one therapy, one solution. It's the whole continuum of what we offer people who are at different stages in their experience in dealing with mental health issues. And it's a monumental shift in thinking"
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a statewide series of listening sessions and a spring summit aimed at exploring the issues impacting the mental health of youth throughout New York State. Together, these initiatives will build on the Governor's $1 billion plan to overhaul New York State's mental health continuum of care and provide an opportunity for experts to advise state leaders on future policy recommendations to improve youth wellness.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the event is available here.
PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Thank you everyone. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Great to be back here, and to talk about a topic that is so critically important. First of all, I'd like to acknowledge some of our distinguished guests who are here. Commissioner Ann Marie Sullivan. Dr. Sullivan is the head of our Office of Mental Health, and she is at the forefront of finding solutions to help people, and particularly our young people, cope with everything that life is throwing at them. So, Dr. Sullivan, thank you. Thank you for being a part of our team as well.
Suzanne Miles-Gustave, I want to thank her for being the Acting Commissioner of OCFS, all you do for us as well, and thank you very much. Let's give her a round of applause, Suzanne. You'll be hearing from Dr. Michael Lindsey, who's the Professor of Social Work here at NYU, but also is a leading expert on behavioral health, on child and adolescent psychology and social work, and making sure that, again, using science to help us find answers to our problems today. So, Dr. Lindsey, thank you. We look forward to hearing from you in a couple minutes.
We also have Katrina Armstrong, the CEO of Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Let's thank our CEO for being here, Dr. Armstrong. Blair Simpson, the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry here at Columbia University, Dr. Simpson, thank you.
And someone that you're going to fall in love with - a young woman who has the courage to do what - you will have the courage, but as soon as you get up here, you'll be fine.
Kay-Danielle Thompson, a student speaker, and all the students that I just had the most incredible experience sitting down with, having a chance to hear from them directly what the experience starting exactly three years ago was all about. How they coped with the pandemic, the isolation, the distance from their normal support systems, how they got through it, how they often help their own friends and help their own family members and what the effects are still today, three years later, because we're still reeling with the effects of that pandemic on society overall. But certainly, our children who were trying to be regular teenagers in middle school and high school, which is hard enough as it is, and you throw a pandemic on top of it, so those who are the survivors of that will always look back and say, "I can handle that because I got through the pandemic as a teenager."
So, I would wear that as a badge of courage young people. I truly, truly would. So, to the Office of Mental Health and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, I thank all of you for making us feel welcome here today and talk about how we talk about teaching and integrate research and therapeutic approaches for care for patients with mental illnesses. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you're doing is trying to figure out the human condition under circumstances that no other generation had to deal with.
And it's hard, but we'll be looking to your guides, your advice, your research, your solutions. As a leader of this State, we want solutions. We don't want to pretend we have all the answers. Never a good strategy. We ask the experts. And so, I thank you for helping lead the way because New York is always a leader no matter what we do.
And this is another example of that. So, we're here to talk about how we can get people the care they need. And one of the conversations we had with the young people is it's really hard to ask for help. It's really hard. There's a stigma associated with it - shows a vulnerability, a weakness. We're told to be strong and tough. Do you really need help?
Guess what, everybody? We all need help at different points in our lives. So, overcoming that stigma is an important part of letting people know they don't have to go through what they're going through alone. And I thank the young people for reminding us - so the responsibility that we have as adults to make sure that those support systems are in place, particularly in places like schools, where young will spend most of their day or after school programs.
We talked about how important that was - to have positive activities outside the classroom before they go home. And the temptations of the street may be there on the way home. So, we talked about mental health. It's been overlooked for a long time.
This is not a new phenomenon. No one ever talked about mental health. It's kind of shushed about, you know, someone who needed help or a therapist like, "Oh, you don't want to tell anybody about it." There's a shame associated with it. But right now, our nation and our State are in the middle of a mental health crisis and it's impacting all New Yorkers.
And that's why in my budget and my State of the State address, we put mental health front and center. Never before has a State leaned this hard, this publicly into the issue of helping people deal with mental health challenges. So, I have said the era of ignoring mental health is over - declared it so. And we're going to lean hard into this. So, how do you do that? How do you do that? Well, first of all, we look at the entire continuum of care. There's not one place and one therapy, one solution. It's the whole continuum of what we offer people who are at different stages in their experience in dealing with mental health issues. And it's a monumental shift in thinking to say that it's more than just providing a bed at a hospital, and we're done with you - good luck when you leave. That doesn't solve the problem.
So, I was so proud to announce as a statement of my priority and the priorities of this State, $1 billion in our budget to improve access to mental health care. And no one has really paid much attention to the delivery of mental health services since the 70's. You know, those who are really old, and I don't see many really old people in this room, but the de-institutionalization that occurred in the 70's when the government policy was "Bad things are happening inside these hospitals, inside these buildings, so the answer is open the doors and let everybody out, and good luck." That's when we started seeing people on our streets in the throes of mental illness and crises without support. Now, that does not mean what they're getting inside those institutions was appropriate, or in the best circumstances. We know that. But the alternative of just benign neglect and saying you're on your own was an epic failure as well.
When I was a teenager, my parents were very much involved in the social causes of the day. Every single issue they cared deeply about and instilled that in me. One of them was at the West Seneca Developmental Center near my community was on the verge of releasing all these people who had literally grown up there. They knew no other life, and yet they're supposed to be able to go to shopping and find an apartment and take care of themselves. And so, we brought young people - and I was probably 13 or 14 at the time - we brought teenagers into our home, and my job was someone who knew how to get to the store and go to the drug store and go grocery shopping, go to a movie on my own. We took these people - and their names were Melanie and Roger. I still considered them siblings because we spent so much time with them. Our job was to help them integrate into society, but that was one family and two people we could help. So many people didn't get that.
And so, we are investing in, yes, bringing more psychiatric beds online because during the pandemic, so many of those beds were needed for COVID - understand that. But they weren't brought back online when we stopped needing the beds and we asked hospitals to do this last year. Please open up the beds. We even compressed the reimbursement rates for psychiatric beds because they didn't meet what you could get with a nonpsychiatric patient and everyone was saying, "Why is this happening?" So, we tried to do that. This year we're being a little more aggressive about it, saying, "We plan to have this change." So, we'll bring more psychiatric beds online. That's for people in a serious condition. Many people who've been on the streets to take them off the streets, or you encourage them to come off the streets. We have all these teams in the subways and elsewhere working with the Mayor, finding people, persuading them to trust someone enough to go with them to get help. But you show up at the door and there's not a place for them to go, what have you achieved?
So, we need more beds online, but also, we have to fund supportive and transitional housing for them as well. So, we're going to build 3,500 supportive housing units to make sure that people who are, again, the continuum of care, you might need the hospital in the short term. Now you have a plan. You need to stay in touch with a provider, but a place to go, a place that has supportive services wrapped around you, literally like a blanket to make sure that you can get through what you're going through. So, we're building more residential units with wraparound services, expanding our outpatient services, and also ensuring that insurance companies, and this has been a barrier for too many people, insurance companies pick up the cost of mental health care. They should, and they need to start doing it now.
But in addition to all this, today we're here to talk about a special focus on our young people. First, we need to find ways to increase mental health services for our young people in the first place. Too many schools have barely guidance counselors. We were talking to some of the students about the number of therapists they have in their school.
One student would say, I have 700 students. We have four people who - four adults who handle this or one person for 300. I mean, every student that we spoke to a short time ago had a number and they knew that they saw the long lines of their friends who are sitting there and imagine, you talk about stigma - it's awkward.
It's hard enough being a teenager when you finally decide you need the help, and then you're supposed to go wait and wait and wait and wait for someone to finally give you attention. And these individuals are doing God's work on Earth. These therapists, these teachers, these guidance counselors, mental health professionals in schools, but there's not enough of them, and they're asked to do the impossible. We have to give them more support. We need more services in our schools. Full stop. And that's how we start dealing with young people before they get to a point where they need a lifetime of care, you help them when they're starting out in life, and you can get rid of it and help them have coping mechanisms so when stress comes their way, and it always will, that they know how to deal with it because a professional, an adult, could help them in that time.
We also talked about, in our group, about the need for more peer counselors. Right? Young people are all shaking your heads. Right? This is what we need is training for our young people. We should talk about who you're going to trust when you're 13, 14, 15, 16 years old. So, now you're in collision course with your parents. I know. Believe it or not, I was once a teenager. And I actually raised a teenager, a couple of teenagers, especially a teenage daughter. We both survived the experience. But I saw what she was going through, and it was hard. It was hard. And because I was in my career, I knew what to look for. But parents, they don't know the signs always.
Teachers have so much on their minds. I mean, who are the people that are going to say, "Yeah, this person needs help." It's often your friends. Imagine if we could give some training to other classmates - and they don't have to have this as their career, but just during that time, talking about the toughest time in life when you're a teenager, to have more people who'll be kind of watching out for this. Paying attention to signs, because students need these services now.
And we're investing over $30 million to expand school-based services across the state. And that's just the start. And we're going to have $10 million for suicide prevention because the suicide rates are staggering. And to know that one out of three teenage girls have contemplated suicide, and actually boys, young men, they actually accomplish the suicide at a higher rate. We're losing our kids. And the effect on their friends and their family, it never goes away. It never goes away.
So, we're investing in all kinds of services - eating disorders, so common. Who talks about that? Kind of a shame associated with it. We're investing money there. We're investing $12 million in a HealthySteps program promoting early childhood development, as well as at-home crisis intervention for children and teens. And what we're going to be able to do if we get the support from the Legislature, it's in my budget. We're wrapping up the budget hopefully in the next few weeks, just getting started. But there is an end we hope to achieve. If we get that billion dollars, we'll have the resources we need to do what we have to do and continue to meet the unmet mental health needs.
So, focusing on our young people is the most critical thing right now as far as I'm concerned with mental health, because they're the most vulnerable. We just talked about the gathering I had, and we're the adults, right? It's up to us. It's up to us to figure it out. And when I think about the fact that 37 percent of high school students are reporting poor mental health right now, and that has many layers - what is poor mental health? But the fact that that many are actually saying - and think about the ones who would never even say they do. It's probably everybody else, right?
It's a normal state of affairs, but it can escalate, it can get worse if there's not treatment and help. So, we also know that more Black students have attempted suicide. And when it comes to LGBTQ+ teens, more than half have already experienced - report having poor mental health and are four times more likely to have attempted suicide. Imagine the stress on these young people.
So, I'm a mom, as I've mentioned. This affects me personally - first mom to be the Governor of the State of New York. First grandma to be the Governor of the State of New York. But that's another story. But it gives you this emotional intelligence that I can bring to this, and the passion that I bring to this crisis because I know the kind of world I want to live in, and it's one where we're here to help our young people - all of our people - give them the support they need. And realize that there's influences out there, like social media. I never had a deal with this, never had a deal with this.
Now we talk to the young people, most of them, their preferred platform is Instagram. I'm not sure that's always showing positive images of young people, making them feel good about themselves, how they look and about their lives having positive forces, but we also talked about how there are places where they can get positive messages. And we have to kind of switch the whole conversation. If it's going to be there, how it can have companies realize their responsibility as well to give out messaging and content and get other people to put public service-type ads out there that can make you just feel better about life.
That's so doable. That is absolutely something we can do. So, we have to talk to, also, parents. Parents didn't know what your kids are seeing, didn't know who they're talking to, 12, 13, 14-year-olds do not know who they're talking to. I tell you; it is so easy to disguise yourself as a fellow teenager and lure someone to sites or to a physical location. That is becoming way too common.
So, parents need to know that as well, as well as our peer counselors. So, I'm here to announce that today was the very first of a series of listening sessions. I'm going to get out there. Let me just put the budget to bed first. As soon as we get that done, I want to tour this state and I want to help break down the barriers and the stigma and let more people talk about it, and then there's a ripple effect. It's a ripple effect. We can change - I have no doubt in my mind - we can change people's attitudes by just leaning into this and embracing it and knowing the power of our voices. And being trusted advisors as so many other people.
So, we're going to do that. But also, this spring I want to have a summit and bring together the experts; the law enforcement who can help remind us the dangers that lurk out there. Have professionals in mental health, the signs to look for. I want to bring in the social media platforms' leaders, people in this space who - we can convey to them their responsibility to help change the whole dynamic and what their influence is all about, make it more positive and bring together young people and clinicians, experts. I'm going to bring everybody together.
Anybody wants to help solve this? You're coming to my summit, okay? So, we're going to do this and let's just look at it from a commonsense approach. What are the tools that we need, how we can help people, and I will tell you right now before we get to this, I don't have all the answers. But the answers lie out there. And we started today with those conversations with our young people, getting me thinking about things differently, letting the adults think about things from the perspective of the young people, the people we are trying to help.
So, then we'll talk about how we have policies that support the ideas, whether it's prevention, whether it's treatment, and other interventions that we can work on with legislation if necessary. So, let's confront this with urgency. I'm urgent - I have a sense of urgency around this. I hope we all do. Because one more young person who thinks that everything is so hopeless, they decide to take their own life, that's not a tragedy for that individual and their family. It's a tragedy for society. It's an indictment on all of us that we weren't there to help somebody in need. That's not okay. This is New York. We're always better than that.
And I know that listening to the young people will make a difference, and that is why I'm very proud to introduce our representative of the students, a student leader, Kay-Danielle Thompson, a 17-year-old student at Hillcrest High School from Queens. We talked about Queens as being the most diverse place on the planet. It's fascinating, and she's a member of a group called Youth Power, that makes sure that young people have the support they need and live in a community with respect and dignity. And I want to thank her for her leadership in stepping forward and being an advocate for other teenagers across this country. So, ladies and gentlemen, let me present to you, Kay-Danielle Thompson.