We’re about one month out from the Democratic primary and Andrew Cuomo enjoys a commanding lead in the polls. Should he win the nomination and prevail in the general, many challenges await. Some of the toughest will involve fixing problems Cuomo himself created as governor.
One such challenge is mental health. During the 2010s, the Cuomo administration slashed hundreds of beds from the state psychiatric hospital system. Those cuts exacerbated New York’s crisis of untreated serious mental illness and imposed heavy burdens on city systems such as jails and homeless services.
Reducing the use of inpatient psychiatric treatment was the core thrust of Cuomo’s “Transformation Plan” for the state Office of Mental Health. When that plan was launched in 2014, the supply of beds in state psychiatric centers stood at about 4,000, down from more than 90,000 during the mid-1950s.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Daily News (paywall)
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Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is a 2024-25 public scholar at the City College of New York’s Moynihan Center. Julie Sandorf is the president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation.
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