A new report released by the state comptroller highlights an alarming trend.
According to the report, the percentage of New Yorkers with mental illness is rising, at the same time as the number of available psychiatric beds in the mental health care system are declining.
Between 2013 and 2022, there was a 23 percent increase in the number of New Yorkers served by the state’s public mental health system, while we lost 990 psychiatric beds.
That loss of 990 psychiatric beds amounts to a 10.5 percent drop in capacity in inpatient psychiatric facilities.
The pandemic was a major contributor. Hospitals in New York State were allowed during the pandemic to close some psychiatric beds and use them for COVID patients instead.
The rule was that hospitals had to reopen those beds to psychiatric patients by February 2023, or at least submit a plan to reopen them by April 2023.
By December 2023, only around 500 beds had reopened out of the 843 that had been taken offline during the pandemic.
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