Resources
Where to actually get help
Guides, state systems, legal help, insurance appeals, and the organizations that answer the phone. Every link here was opened and checked before it was posted.
Links last reviewed September 21, 2026. If one is broken or out of date, please let us know.
NSSC guides
From the national coalition
Free, written by and for families, and available as PDFs you can print and carry into a hospital or a courtroom.
SMI Caregivers Guide
Eight pages on the practical obstacles caregivers hit first: the HIPAA wall and how to work with it, the risk of a loved one being handled as a criminal matter rather than a medical one, and how to make yourself heard between the medical and legal systems.
Direct PDF: full guide · printable trifold
Understanding Psychosis Guide
Darrell Herrmann's explanation of psychosis and of anosognosia — the neurological inability to recognise one's own illness — together with advocacy strategies for families whose relative has entered the justice system. This is the guide to hand to someone who thinks refusal of treatment is simply a choice.
Direct PDF: full guide · printable trifold
Political Advocacy Guide
How to approach a legislator, what to say, and what actually registers in a district office. Pair it with the bill numbers on our legislation page.
Treatment Terms Guide
Plain-language definitions of the vocabulary used around you in a hospital or a hearing — the terms that everyone in the room assumes you already know.
Quarterly Resource Guide
The coalition's member publication: current resources, upcoming events, and what the state chapters are working on.
Education & Advocacy Tools
Materials for briefing a community group, a police department, or a school — the things you need when someone asks you to come and explain this to a room.
National Position Papers
The coalition's formal positions on federal and state policy — useful when you need a citable statement of where NSSC stands rather than a summary of it.
Support groups
Peer-led groups, open to New Yorkers
Run by the national coalition and open to members in any state. Each is built around a specific experience rather than being a general mental health group.
All NSSC peer-led groups
The full listing with meeting times and how to join — start here if you are not sure which group fits. All groups are confidential, and all are explicitly educational and supportive rather than medical or legal.
SMI Caregivers
For parents, partners, siblings and adult children carrying the day-to-day weight of someone else's severe mental illness.
The Hidden Sentence
For families whose relative with severe mental illness is in jail or prison — a situation that isolates people even from other caregivers.
Survivors of Loss
For parents and caregivers who have lost a loved one.
The Anchor
For families and friends supporting a loved one with severe mental illness — the coalition's general caregiver group.
Success Circle
For families and loved ones to come together and share what has actually worked — the counterweight to a movement that spends most of its time on what has failed.
Replanting Lives
For people working toward healthier relationships with family members, with professionals, and with the person in their life who has a severe mental illness.
New York systems
The state machinery, and how to reach it
Kendra's Law and assisted outpatient treatment
The Office of Mental Health's page on court-ordered AOT for people unlikely to survive safely in the community without supervision. It links onward to the AOT portal holding guidance, forms and programme data. Since 2025 a lapsed order can be renewed within six months, and past non-compliance no longer disqualifies a person — see our legislation page. Petitions are filed through your county AOT programme, so search your county's name plus "assisted outpatient treatment" for the local contact.
New York State Office of Mental Health
The agency that runs the state psychiatric centres, licenses programmes, and publishes the programme directory. Its statistics pages are where much of the data quoted on this site originates.
HelpHub for Families — mental and behavioral health
A state directory from the Council on Children and Families pointing to NAMI-NYS, Mental Hygiene Legal Service, county health departments, NY Connects, the OMH programme directory, and youth peer advocates. A reasonable first stop if you do not yet know which door you need.
PSYCKES
New York's HIPAA-compliant clinical database holding a person's psychiatric service history across providers, including crisis and mobile crisis contacts. Families cannot log in — it is a clinician tool — but it is worth knowing it exists: after the May 2026 Chelsea killing, NAMI-NYC's first public question was whether anyone had consulted it before discharge. You can ask a treating clinician whether they have.
Legal rights
Free legal help
Mental Hygiene Legal Service
A New York State agency, founded in 1964, that represents and litigates on behalf of people receiving services for a mental disability — including those in state facilities, in guardianship proceedings, and in assisted outpatient treatment cases. It operates through the four Appellate Division departments; the link goes to the Second Department, and the other three are reachable from nycourts.gov. If a relative is facing a commitment or AOT hearing, MHLS is likely already assigned to them.
LawHelpNY
A searchable directory of free civil legal help across New York, filtered by county and problem type — useful for the adjacent problems that follow a crisis: housing, benefits, guardianship, debt.
Insurance
When coverage is denied
A denial is not the end of the matter, and New York has two free routes to challenge one. Use them — the appeal rate on mental health denials is far lower than the reversal rate.
CHAMP — Community Health Access to Addiction and Mental Healthcare Project
New York's independent behavioral health ombudsman programme, run statewide by the Community Service Society with regional partners. Free help understanding your insurance rights, finding treatment your plan covers, and fighting a coverage denial. Not a crisis line.
Helpline: (888) 614-5400
Department of Financial Services — complaints and external appeal
If an insurer or HMO denies care as not medically necessary, experimental, or out-of-network, you have a right to an external appeal decided outside the insurer. Complaints and appeals are filed through the DFS portal, and you may formally designate someone — a relative, an advocate, CHAMP — to handle it for you.
Research & data
If you need the evidence
For testimony, a public comment, a letter to an editor, or an argument with someone who says nothing can be done.
Treatment Advocacy Center
National research on severe mental illness, anosognosia, and civil commitment law, including Grading the States, which scores all fifty states' psychiatric treatment laws, and a look-up of each state's SMI resources.
Systems Under Strain — deinstitutionalization in New York
The source of the bed and population figures on our home page: roughly 3,600 state psychiatric beds against a historical peak above 90,000, more than 7,000 people with serious mental illness in New York City shelters, and about 1,600 in the city's jails.
Rikers Island and Mental Health
The Data Collaborative for Justice and Katal Center's November 2025 finding that 60% of the Rikers population needs mental health treatment and is held longer than those who do not, with fifteen recommendations on diversion, competency proceedings and hospital-based secure beds.
NSSC — Treatment Saves, Neglect Costs
The coalition's evidence collection on the human and economic cost of untreated severe mental illness, with a route to submit evidence of your own.
Missing something?
Tell us what belongs here
This page is meant to grow. If you know a New York programme, a county service, a legal clinic, or a guide that helped your family and is not listed, send it to the state director with a link and we will check it and add it.