New York City Mayor Eric Adams' new plan for aiding the mentally ill is facing backlash for its effectiveness.

Adams' plan allows police officers, firefighters, paramedics and other trained professionals to involuntarily hospitalize anyone deemed to be severely mentally ill. The new plan is aimed specifically at homeless people dealing with severe mental illness.

But, experts view the plan as shortsighted, and not as a more permanent solution.

Billye Jones is a licensed clinical social worker and an adjunct professor at New York University's Silver School of Social Work.

She said she feels the plan doesn't necessarily address long-term benefits of in-patient care, and adds that it also overlooks the issue of homelessness.

"Fundamentally, not having a home is destabilizing and it can diminish anyone's mental health and overall sense of safety," said Jones. "I don't really think that's being addressed in the plan."

Jones said there needs to be a long-term commitment to mental health systems, dealing with homelessness and stabilizing people long-term.

She said the plan would be better if it addressed the intersections of homelessness and mental illness.

For the plan to be salvaged, Jones said she feels a multi-year plan with city agencies involved with mental health and housing need to have a voice at the table.

Some experts are glad the conversation about this issue is being brought to the forefront of the city's consciousness.

Michael Capiello is former president of the National Association of Social Workers' New York chapter. He said there should be some different ways of starting a plan, and wants to see an assessment done of people this plan will involve.

"I do not think we have a clear assessment of the population who are, what is referred to as treatment refractory," said Capiello, "who are not the types of people who engage in traditional mental-health services."

He said he thinks the city should also consider the difficulty of engaging this sector of the population.

The assessment should examine how people got to this point. He questions if these are people who have long-standing disabilities, or would have been identified by New York State's offices of Disabilities or Mental Health.

In the end, Capiello said he wants to understand where the disconnect began.

The hope for this plan is to quell the recent rash of violent attacks plaguing New York City's mass transit system.

Kendall Atterbury is a social worker and an adjunct professor at NYU's Silver School of Social Work who said she feels the Adams administration is not asking the right questions to help severely mentally ill people.

She adds there are solutions to solve the problem of homelessness, but not exactly an ideal one.

"There is no ideal solution," said Atterbury. "We have a little bit of a Gordian knot here and there is no Alexander's sword; none of us has that. So, I think that's important to just sit with. There are a lot of things I would do differently. The first step is address homelessness through housing stock. If you want to end homelessness, you figure out a way for people to have homes."

She noted that housing isn't just a solution to homelessness but is a priority to begin the work of helping someone with their mental illness.

Atterbury said she thinks this could be a city policy, in spite of the costs.

Since the moral obligation has been up front with this plan, she said she wonders where it rests, at the beginning of the process, the end, or when it's convenient.

A new blood test developed at the Indiana University School of Medicine
may shake up how doctors treat patients who suffer from anxiety disorders.

It took two decades to crack the code, but it now appears researchers can objectively diagnose anxiety through a simple blood test. The discovery offers peace of mind to some and takes away guesswork in treating more than 40 million Americans who struggle with the mental health disorder.

Dr. Alexander Niculescu, professor of psychiatry at Indiana University, said the new approach also helps match patients with existing medications.

"The big breakthrough here is not just developing the test, but in some way demystifying these stigmatizing mental health challenges; mild biological abnormalities or not so mild," Niculescu explained. "They are correctable, this can be in a primary care setting as part of your annual exam."

Niculescu added the test is available today with an order from a doctor, and results are usually returned after about three weeks.

Right now patients are responsible for the cost of the anxiety blood test, according to Niculescu, but there is a strong effort underway for Medicare and insurance companies to cover costs within the next year or two.

"Anxiety is usually viewed sort of not on par with other major severe mental health illnesses," Niculescu pointed out. "But if you ask patients who suffer from anxiety disorders it's as impairing. It curtails their lives; they're limited in terms of what they can do, and we want to do something to help them."

The I-U School of Medicine researchers who developed the test have spun it off with an Indianapolis-based tech startup, MindX Sciences.


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A host of barriers that make it harder for people suffering from poor mental health to access preventive care has led to an increase in care delivered through emergency departments, according to a new report.

Rick Doucet is the CEO of Community Reach Center, which provides mental-health care in Adams County. He said lack of adequate insurance coverage can cause people to put off getting help, which can lead to deteriorating conditions.

"It's hard for people that don't have insurance or Medicaid to make that decision to be seen," said Doucet. "That's why a lot of people end up in the ERs, or they end up being picked up by law enforcement."

Numerous efforts are underway in Colorado to improve diagnosis and treatment of mental-health conditions, reduce stigma, and expand coverage and access to services.

But according to new analysis by the Center for Improving Value in Health Care, the number of patients seen by Emergency Departments across Colorado continues to rise.

Emergency rooms have become the most accessible option for many suffering from potentially preventable mental-health crises.

From 2016 to 2021, the number of children seeking mental-health or potential self-harm care at emergency departments increased by 158%. In 2021, youths accounted for one in five of these visits.

Doucet noted that emergency rooms are not set up to provide mental-health services, and the services they can provide come at significantly higher costs.

"I mean, you walk into the ER, the dollars start adding up," said Doucet. "So it is going to increase the costs to the community, to the insurance companies, to the individual if they don't have insurance."

Anxiety, panic and major depressive disorders account for 44% of all mental health-related diagnoses in Colorado.

Doucet said the state is currently looking at the possibility of funding community mental-health centers at a higher rate to help cover the potentially crippling costs of uncompensated care.

"Because if you don't cover the costs for people that don't have insurance," said Doucet, "or their insurance companies don't pay enough for the services, you can't keep your doors open, you can't serve them."




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An estimated 291,000 Iowans suffer from eating disorders, which range from mild to lethal.

Experts are spreading knowledge and information during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and calling for additional education, funding and research to combat the problem.

Researchers have not been able to pin down exactly what causes eating disorders, which can range from an unhealthy relationship with food to a lethal obsession with overeating, under-eating, or both; often at the same time.

Lauren Smolar, vice president of mission and education for the National Eating Disorders Association, said the illnesses can show up in a variety of ways, including someone abruptly eating drastically greater or lesser amounts of food than they typically do.

"It could also mean that they are not interested in eating meals with other people anymore," Smolar pointed out. "Drastic changes in shape or weight can be a warning sign of an eating disorder. But even cause for concern can be just changes in mood and shifts in attitudes; the way that they're talking about foods."

One thing researchers agree on is eating disorders are a mental illness, not a choice, and while people often assume young, white females are most frequently afflicted, anorexia and bulimia nervosa, along with a host of other eating disorders, do not discriminate and are common in both genders of varying ages and ethnic groups.

Smolar noted the pandemic heightened awareness of eating disorders and other mental health issues, but added, despite some progress, there is still precious little research, funding and social acceptance of eating disorders as lethal mental illnesses the way, for example, cancer is accepted as a deadly disease.

"But you can see cancer on a physical screening, whereas it's a little harder to show that an eating disorder is there, in essence," Smolar observed. "There is still a lot to be learned about brain chemistry and rewiring of brains and how mental health works, and it's much more normalized to talk about it, but there's just a lot more education that needs to be done."

Smolar said because health care workers are not required to learn about eating disorders as part of their training, early detection is also lacking. The American Society for Nutrition reports more than 10,000 people die each year from eating disorders, the second most lethal mental illness, behind only opioid addiction.