What New York law says, and what is pending

Builds a set of procedures around the moment of discharge. A hospital would have to run a standardized AOT eligibility review before releasing anyone admitted or retained involuntarily under Article 9, and send them out with a written community adherence plan covering medication, outpatient appointments, housing and crisis contacts, followed by staff outreach within 72 hours. Where certain conditions are shown by clear and convincing evidence — two involuntary admissions in 24 months, a serious-harm act or threat in 12 months, or discharge with documented non-adherence — the initial AOT order would run 12 months, subject to a mid-term review that can shorten it. After an arrest for a violent felony or a credibly reported serious dangerous incident, the director of community services would have five business days to petition for court reassessment.

Broadens and streamlines assisted outpatient treatment and strikes the sunset clause, so Kendra's Law would no longer expire and repeal itself on a fixed date.

Adds any adult living in the person's community, and “community ambassadors” in localities that run such a programme, to the list of people who may apply for involuntary admission under Mental Hygiene Law § 9.27. At present that list reaches family, cohabitants, physicians and social services officials.

When a police or peace officer takes someone into custody under § 9.41 for an emergency psychiatric evaluation, this would let the person choose which hospital they are brought to, provided it is certified for emergency admissions under § 9.39(a), has adequate space and staffing, and is within fifty miles. The Assembly version also requires the state to give each county sheriff a current list of qualifying hospitals.

Defines qualified clinical examiner and qualified mental health professional in the Mental Hygiene Law so that psychologists, psychiatric nurse practitioners and licensed clinical social workers — not physicians alone — can evaluate whether someone needs psychiatric hospitalization or AOT. It also requires psychiatric hospitals to coordinate with community providers and local officials at intake and discharge, and lets an adult shelter director request a resident's removal to a hospital or crisis stabilization centre.

Requires state-operated psychiatric hospitals, Article 28 hospitals and correctional facilities each to keep a staff member specifically trained in filing AOT petitions. It also bars releasing a person with a history of mental illness, or found to have one on a court-ordered evaluation, until they have been counselled on and registered with the services available to them.

Sets out what a mental health practitioner may do when a patient directly communicates a threat of serious, imminent harm to themselves or to a readily identifiable person, where the threat carries a serious intent to act and the ability to carry it out: modify the treatment, begin hospitalization procedures, warn the intended victim, or notify law enforcement. It protects practitioners who act in good faith and requires nothing that would endanger the practitioner or increase the danger to a potential victim.

Authorizes the Commissioner to designate residential treatment facilities — semi-secure, in the sponsor's description — for people with serious mental illness accused of at least one felony-level crime, to be used as an alternative to incarceration in place of state and local correctional facilities. Residents would receive psychiatric and therapeutic treatment there rather than in a jail or prison.

Correction Law § 137 currently shields a fixed checklist of diagnoses — schizophrenia, psychotic disorders, major depression, bipolar I and II — from solitary-type confinement. These bills delete the checklist and point instead to the Mental Hygiene Law's general definition of a person with a serious mental illness, which turns on functional impairment rather than a diagnosis.

Would require the department, working with clinicians, to divert or remove anyone who has at any time been diagnosed with a serious mental illness out of segregated confinement or a residential rehabilitation unit and into a residential mental health treatment unit. The disciplinary case against the person still proceeds; only the placement changes.

Would repeal the 2021 HALT Act and restore the earlier solitary-confinement rules, citing rising prison violence. It narrows “segregated confinement” back to special housing and keeplock and removes residential rehabilitation units from the scheme; it stretches the mental-health assessment deadline in level three and four facilities from seven days to fourteen; and it reduces the required out-of-cell therapeutic treatment for people with serious mental illness from three hours daily to two hours a day, five days a week, while adding circumstances in which they may be placed on a restricted diet. It keeps a diversion-or-removal requirement but removes the residential rehabilitation unit as a destination.

Adds a new § 461-v to the Social Services Law specifying when the state may limit the census of people with serious mental illness living in an adult home. The sponsor's aim is to let people with SMI keep access to housing and services at certain not-for-profit adult homes notwithstanding the census cap imposed under the O'Toole settlement.

Directs the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, with the Office of Mental Health and OCFS, to develop a mental illness training course for providers of temporary housing, focused on recognizing signs and symptoms. It reaches family and adult shelters, hotels, emergency apartments, domestic violence shelters, runaway and homeless youth shelters, and refugee safe houses.

Adds Mental Hygiene Law § 7.51 directing the Commissioner of Mental Health to establish a crisis intervention demonstration programme in cities of a million or more — which means New York City — pairing trained crisis-response personnel with the response to mental health emergencies in place of a purely police response.

Creates a nine-member task force within the Office of Mental Health to study whether residents of OMH-licensed and OMH-funded housing can stay where they are as they age, and what supports that would take. It reports to the Governor and Legislature within twelve months and dissolves thirty days later.

Amends Mental Hygiene Law § 19.09 to require the Commissioner of the Office of Addiction Services and Supports to mandate mental health evaluations for people enrolled in substance use disorder treatment programmes, and to write the implementing regulations.