Research on involuntary treatment, both inpatient hospitalization and court-ordered outpatient treatment, has repeatedly raised questions about whether coercion itself improves outcomes. What consistently matters is access to effective services and supports, not whether someone is forced to accept them. When people receive intensive community-based services, housing, peer support, and sustained engagement, they have greater opportunities to advance their recovery without the harms associated with coercion.

We have seen this firsthand through our many years of work in the field, and 糖心传媒’s recent independent statewide evaluation of Kendra’s Law reinforces these concerns. Many people subjected to court-ordered treatment had been seeking help but struggled to access the services they needed. The evaluation also demonstrated that people receiving intensive voluntary services can achieve outcomes comparable to those under court orders, challenging the assumption that coercion is necessary to achieve meaningful improvements.

Rather than expanding involuntary hospitalization or bringing more people before judges, 糖心传媒 must expand both access to services and the range of voluntary supports available. That means investing in supportive housing, intensive community treatment, INSET, peer support, crisis stabilization centers, peer-run respites, and other services that people can access before their needs escalate into crises. We must also make these services more welcoming, culturally responsive, and flexible so that people who have had negative experiences with the system can find support they trust.

People should not have to lose their freedom to receive the services and support they need. Our goal must be a system that reaches people earlier, offers meaningful choices, respects their rights, and helps them live and recover successfully in their communities. We cannot force our way to a better mental health system. We must build one that people can access, trust, and willingly engage with.

Mental Illness Doesn’t Cancel Your Right to Say No
By Jeffrey A Singer and Adam Omary | Reason | October 14, 2026

If a treatment can improve your health, does that give the government the right to force it onto you? Should the state compel people with diabetes to take insulin, patients with hypertension to take their medications, or people with obesity to lose weight?

Most Americans would recoil at such proposals. Yet when it comes to people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, many people seem willing to make an exception.

A physician who administers treatment to a competent adult against the patient’s will violates one of medicine’s most fundamental ethical principles: informed consent. Why should that principle carry less weight when the doctor is a psychiatrist? Yet in a recent City Journal , Stephen Eide and Valerie Franchitti of the Manhattan Institute argue that public support for involuntary psychiatric treatment reflects a welcome recognition of its potential benefits.

Strangely, the article entirely avoids the concept of informed consent. Where it acknowledges any limitations to involuntary treatment at all, it considers only the possibility that coercive treatment may increase stigma against mental illness.  

But the more fundamental objection is liberty. A psychiatric diagnosis does not extinguish your right to control your body. Competent adults have the right to decide what substances they consume, which medical treatments they accept, and what risks they take, even when others consider their choices unwise or self-destructive. As the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz , “I oppose involuntary psychiatric interventions not because I believe that they are necessarily ‘bad’ for patients but because I oppose using the coercive apparatus of the state to impose psychiatric relations on persons against their will.”

Eide and Franchitti write, “The public is right to suspect that involuntary treatment can be effective.” They cite data from the  showing substantial reductions in hospitalization, incarceration, homelessness, substance abuse, and suicide attempts following enrollment under , which mandates outpatient psychiatric treatment. Yet these data do not establish that coercion caused those improvements. Participants also received increased access to psychiatric services, case management, and other support. Without adequately separating the effects of those services from the effects of coercion itself, the reported improvements cannot establish that compulsory treatment was responsible.

The authors also justify involuntary psychiatric treatment by citing subway attacks, mass shootings, and other violent incidents. But there is a fundamental difference between holding people accountable for violating others’ rights and confining them because they might become dangerous. Communities can enforce laws against assault, trespassing, and public nuisance without criminalizing homelessness or mental illness.

Moreover, involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital or rehabilitation facility鈥攕ometimes for prolonged periods鈥攄eprives people of their liberty without a criminal conviction. Although civil commitment involves judicial procedures and opportunities for review, continued confinement may depend heavily on mental health professionals’ assessments of whether patients meet release criteria. As Szasz , coercive psychiatrists can thus function as “judges and jailers not physicians and healers.”

Severe mental illness can impair decision-making, sometimes profoundly, but diagnosis and incapacity are not the same. Even among psychiatric inpatients housed for severe mental illness, a meta-review of the research at BMC Psychiatry , most retain the capacity to make treatment decisions. Outside of hospitalized patients, decision-making capacity is . 

The legal scholar Elyn Saks, who has lived with schizophrenia, brings both personal experience and academic expertise to the debate over involuntary psychiatric treatment. Having experienced involuntary hospitalization, physical restraints, and forced medication, Saks has questioned the assumption that mental illness justifies overriding patients’ wishes. In her book she examines the ethical and legal problems posed by involuntary hospitalization, forced medication, and physical restraints. Saks and the psychiatrist Dilip Jeste have also reviewed empirical research on decision-making capacity among people with , analyzing how capacity varies among individuals and how clinicians can assess and enhance patients’ ability to make informed decisions. 

Though the medical field has developed structured interviews with standardized scores for mental incapacity, doctors can . Mental capacity is also decision-specific and time-specific, not a permanent status attached to a diagnosis. That same BMC Psychiatry review of the literature describes the impairments seen in psychosis as “temporal, identifiable, and responsive to interventions,” such as presenting information in simpler terms. 

Even when incapacity can be established, we must adhere to the principle of least restrictive intervention. Any intervention must be justified by the circumstances, limited to what is necessary, and designed to preserve as much individual freedom as possible. Compulsory treatment takes different forms, each imposing distinct restrictions on individual liberty. Assisted outpatient treatment allows people to remain in the community but subjects them to a court order governing treatment. Involuntary inpatient commitment deprives people of their physical liberty through hospitalization, while forced medication goes further by overriding bodily autonomy. So impaired decision-making capacity does not automatically justify confinement, let alone forced medication.

Medication can reduce psychotic symptoms, and some psychiatric patients who initially refuse treatment later believe it helped them. But evidence that medication works is not the same as evidence that compulsion produces better outcomes than voluntary treatment, particularly when a person’s decision-making capacity may improve as an acute episode subsides.

In 2024, a in the journal Psychiatry, Psychology and Law found mixed evidence of benefits and harms from involuntary inpatient treatment. Patients admitted involuntarily often experienced improvements in symptoms and functioning, but they also tended to enter treatment with more severe illness, making it difficult to determine how much of the improvement resulted from compulsory intervention itself. Involuntary admission was also associated with higher financial costs and worse patient experiences, including feelings of coercion, loss of freedom, and lower satisfaction. In 2018, The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry published a ; it found that patient experiences were predominantly negative and frequently involved adverse consequences. Overall, no consistent evidence shows that involuntary treatment itself causally improves outcomes, although it unquestionably restricts patients’ freedom and imposes costs on taxpayers.

These concerns are compounded by a health care system that psychiatric overdiagnosis and overmedication, regardless of whether additional interventions yield commensurate benefits for patients.

The difficult case arises when a person genuinely cannot reason about treatment options or communicate an informed choice, and when delaying intervention creates an immediate risk of harm. In such cases, the ethical principle should be the same as elsewhere in medicine: when informed consent cannot be obtained, using an advance directive or surrogate when available, and only to the minimal extent necessary to manage the emergency and restore the patient’s ability to decide. A credible, imminent threat to another person presents a separate public-safety justification for state intervention. But even support for those types of emergency interventions is not the same as support for broad, long-term involuntary psychiatric treatment based on supposed mental incapacity.

City Journal frequently advocates free markets, individual liberty, and limits on government intervention. Yet these writers appear willing to grant the state considerable authority over people’s medical decisions without adequately distinguishing those who lack decision-making capacity from those who retain it. If we distrust government officials to make economic decisions for us, why should we trust them to make decisions about our bodies and medical care?

The post Mental Health and Substance Use Challenges Must Never Mean Losing Your Rights! appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

This past Tuesday, well over 100 representatives from the greater Plattsburg community including local media, family members, legislative staff, OMH and the Alliance came together to celebrate the enormous achievements of the people there who provide and/or receive supports from the state鈥檚 first PROS program at BHSN.

I was very pleased and touched to deliver some remarks at this very joyous and moving celebration and very impressed at how BHSN and so many other PROS programs have moved their efforts beyond program walls into their surrounding communities.  See below for details.

Great thanks to CEO Kathy Clark and VP for Crisis and Rehabilitation Services Paul Ferrari for your great heart-centered leadership and for all of the folks there for the tremendous success they鈥檝e had in meeting their mission over the past 20 years!

Our Alliance team has long served as a dedicated partner in the technical assistance offered to PROS program under the leadership of NYU McSilver Training and TA Centers. For more, see

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BHSN Celebrates 20 years of Services Program
By Luca Gross Plattsburgh Press Republican October 13, 2026

MORRISONVILLE 鈥� Behavioral Health Services North celebrated 20 years of its Personal Recovery Oriented Services program with staff and clients Tuesday.

BHSN hosted the community for a lunch and live music performance by the PROS band Tuesday, Oct 13 at the PROS Learning Center.

Several speakers including former and current staff shared their experiences from behind the scenes of the program as well as participants who shared personal stories describing how the program supported them in their recovery.

President and CEO of BHSN Katherine Cook kicked off the event with a metaphor about a forest and the various trees at different stages of growth found within.

鈥淭wenty years ago, Cross began with the belief that people living with mental health challenges deserve opportunities to grow, to discover their strengths, to build relationships, and to create lives that are meaningful and with purpose,鈥� she said during her remarks. 鈥淥ver these 20 years, this program has grown and evolved, shaped by many of you who have been a part of it. Some have been here since the ancient and earliest days. Others have joined along the way, and some are just beginning their journey.鈥�

鈥淏ut here鈥檚 what I love about the forest: there wasn鈥檛 one tree that was more deserving of its place than another. The ancient oak didn鈥檛 matter any more than the tiniest of sprouts. They were all a part of the forest, each growing at its own rate, at its own pace, and each contributing to the life around it.鈥�

Cook introduced Vice President of Rehabilitation & Crisis Programs at BHSN, Paul Ferrari who lead the event introducing current and former PROS staff and participants.

The event鈥檚 keynote speaker, CEO of the Alliance for Rights and Recovery, Harvey Rosenthal shared his own personal experience with mental health and how recovery and advocacy changed over the years.

He called the people behind the program 鈥減ioneers,鈥�

鈥淭his was the very first PROS in 糖心传媒 State. It鈥檚 amazing what that means,鈥� he said during his remarks, 鈥淧ROS was so controversial, people said it couldn鈥檛 be done. Medicaid wouldn鈥檛 allow it. The programs were afraid to start it. You took the first step for everybody.鈥�

Rosenthal reflected on the course of the greater movement for mental health recovery and advocacy in the US and highlighted the services program for being part of 20 years of that movement.

PROS is a mental health program offered through BHSN, offering tailored therapeutic and rehabilitation treatments designed to empower individuals to reach their goals.

Director of PROS at BHSN, Meagan Perkins said the program offers those in recovery a community.

鈥淧ROS isn鈥檛 just a set of services, it鈥檚 a community and recovery doesn鈥檛 happen without community,鈥� she said.

Perkins said being there for someone during their journey on recovery is her favorite aspect.

鈥淢y favorite part about being involved is that the participants are in the driver鈥檚 seat,鈥� Perkins said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an eye-opening experience to walk alongside someone with their journey. We鈥檙e celebrating their successes.

We鈥檙e supporting them in their setbacks, and we don鈥檛 leave their side.鈥�

鈥淭o see folks decide that PROS feels like home to them on a bad day just lets us know we鈥檙e doing the work that we meant to do,鈥� she added.

Perkins called the PROS program an 鈥渁dventure-based counseling,鈥� meaning they go out into the community several times a week on team-based tasks, such as hiking, snowshoeing, kayaking and swimming.

These also include skills to navigate the world.

鈥淥ur services are in folks鈥� homes. They are in the stores to learn how to grocery shop. They are on public transportation to teach them how to navigate public transportation,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e in the courtrooms. We鈥檙e in probation appointments, doctors鈥� offices, any part of the community that anyone can access.鈥�

Perkins is also a member of the PROS band.

鈥淚鈥檓 learning to play an instrument that I genuinely thought I never would have been able to play, and I love that because nobody has to arrive as a finished product,鈥� Perkins said during her remarks.

鈥淲e get to learn, we get to figure things out, we get to make mistakes and keep going, and eventually we get to make something together that didn鈥檛 even exist before we started. The point isn鈥檛 whether any of us play perfectly. The point is that we have something to contribute, and we have a place to contribute it. That same spirit shows up in other parts of our program.鈥�

Ferrari said the PROS program was a 鈥渃utting-edge new outlook on rehabilitation,鈥� when it began in 2006.

鈥淚t just makes me very happy that here we are in 2026 with a PROS team that is strong and committed,鈥� he said.

鈥︹�淏elieving that people can change and take those steps. We have to remember a lot of the PROS participants have been in and out of jail, in and out of the hospital, experienced homelessness, experienced a lot of trauma growing up. This program is an anchor, an anchor for people who believe and hope, and change. That people believe in them, and it鈥檚 really about never giving up.鈥�

For more information about BHSN visit for more information about PROS visit .

The post BHSN’s PROS Community Celebrates 20 Years of Successful Support and Service! appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

The Radicals and The Reformers Have to Work Together
聽聽 Sep 28, 2026

I want to talk to you about fighting fascism.

I was lucky enough to participate in the Alliance for Rights and Recovery Conference in Albany last week and see a bunch of old friends and make new ones. The experience left me with a lot to reflect on.

I spent years in the building peer based mutual aid networks outside of the clinical system. After I went to social work school and started training peer workers inside the system, I was really critical of the Mental Health Recovery Movement for being reformist.

I saw all these peer workers getting treated badly and paid badly by the system, and it just felt like the people engaging in the 鈥淩ecovery Movement鈥� were participating in the co-optation of the old radical survivor movement. On top of that, there was just so much role drift and confusion and clinical and institutional nonsense in the culture of those institutions.

So something happened to me at this conference that I wasn鈥檛 expecting. You have to understand that the Alliance for Rights and Recovery isn鈥檛 some middle class, white professional movement. It鈥檚 mostly poor and working class peer workers, Black and Latino, mad people, psych survivors. People who have had to do a lot of struggling. And they almost all work in the public mental health system with a lot of other people who are also struggling and they鈥檝e made a choice to focus their efforts on battling inside the electoral system. What I saw as co-optation, coming from the Icarus Project, was more like long-term strategy and that was hard for me to understand.

So I didn鈥檛 know what to expect from this conference, and I didn鈥檛 get my hopes up.

And what I found in those rooms last week was almost shocking because it was so charged. The most powerful moment for me was when I walked into a conference room, and there was an award ceremony taking place. There were six awards given, and they were each named after a person in the community who had died, and they were given to a current member of the community who was doing outstanding work.

I watched they give out all the awards and something struck me so hard: this is what human beings do to maintain culture and to provide legacy and continuity. It鈥檚 how we honor each other and maintain our struggles at the same time. I sat there in that room, with tears running down my face.

Anyway, now it鈥檚 2026 and the stakes are absurdly high. I came out of that experience wanting to figure out how to work directly with the Alliance.

On the panel with Pablo Sadler, Livia Davis, Francis Silvestri, and Luke Sikinyi, we put forward the idea of a Project 2029 document: a progressive mental health platform that could grow into a larger fight for Medicare for All. I don鈥檛 know much about that kind of organizing, but I鈥檓 ready to learn.

The post The Radicals and The Reformers Have to Work Together: DuBrul appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

As the city moves forward, however, B-HEARD must evolve to place peers and peer support at the center of its response model. People with lived experience bring unique expertise in engagement, de-escalation, building trust and connecting with individuals who may have had poor experiences in the past which leads to hesitancy to engage with traditional services. We believe non-police crisis response teams that meaningfully integrate peers alongside emergency medical technicians and other health professionals can more effectively support people in crisis while respecting their choices and dignity.

We also must recognize that crisis response cannot end with a choice between remaining at home and going to a hospital. Many people need additional support during a crisis but do not want hospitalization. 糖心传媒 City and the state must expand access to alternatives such as crisis stabilization centers and peer-run crisis respites, giving people welcoming, voluntary places to receive support and move beyond a crisis. Just as importantly, the city must ensure that people are effectively connected to ongoing services, including peer support, INSET, clubhouses, recovery centers, housing and other community-based programs that help prevent future crises and support long-term recovery.

While these services undoubtedly contribute to safer communities, we must be careful not to frame mental health crisis response primarily as a public safety intervention. People with mental health and substance use challenges are too often unfairly associated with violence and dangerousness. Even when unintended, placing mental health services under a public safety framework can reinforce these harmful stereotypes. These are fundamentally health services, designed to support people experiencing health challenges, and they should be understood and implemented that way.

The Alliance will continue monitoring how 糖心传媒 City implements these goals while advocating for a comprehensive crisis service continuum across 糖心传媒 State. This includes expanding non-police crisis response teams that integrate peers and EMTs, passing Daniel’s Law, and implementing current as well as securing funding for additional crisis stabilization centers, peer-run respites, INSET, clubhouses, supportive housing and other voluntary community services.

We are pleased to see the city moving in this direction and look forward to continued progress. Our goal must be a system that responds compassionately when people experience crises, offers meaningful alternatives to hospitalization, and provides the ongoing supports people need to remain healthy, connected and successfully living in their communities.

See below for a recent interview with NYC鈥檚 Office of Community Safety commissioner.

Q&A: NYC鈥檚 New Community Safety Commissioner Shares Her Vision for The City鈥檚 Mental Health Response
By Trenton Daniel | Healthbeat 糖心传媒 | October 13, 2026

Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised to reduce the role of police in responding to mental health emergencies in 糖心传媒 City. Now, the commissioner tasked with helping to deliver on that promise is working to expand the city鈥檚 mental health crisis response services with a fraction of the funding Mamdani proposed during his campaign.

Ayesha Delany-Brumsey, whom Mamdani appointed in May to lead the newly created , is overseeing efforts to expand access to mental health services, including B-HEARD, a program launched in 2021 that dispatches mental health workers to 糖心传媒ers in distress.

Mamdani , bringing together several agencies focused on neighborhood safety, violence prevention, and mental health initiatives. During his campaign, he proposed a $1.1 billion budget for the office. Ultimately, it received $260 million.

The office is part of Mamdani鈥檚 broader public safety agenda, which has who say he has not done enough to reform policing and the criminal justice system. On Monday, of the 糖心传媒 Police Department鈥檚 use-of-force policies.

Among the challenges facing Delany-Brumsey is expanding B-HEARD, which has faced . A May 2025 found that the program had limited hours, geographic coverage, and restrictions on the types of emergency calls it could respond to. The audit also found inadequate tracking of program and performance data, raising questions about whether B-HEARD was meeting its goals.

Previously, Delany-Brumsey held senior roles in the Office of Behavioral Health at NYC Health + Hospitals, the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States. She has a background in public health, mental health, and criminal justice reform, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA.

In a recent interview with Healthbeat, Delany-Brumsey discussed her vision for the office, efforts to expand B-HEARD, and the city鈥檚 push to raise awareness of the 988 mental health crisis line.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Could you tell us a little more about where things stand with the Office of Community Safety and your vision?
It is focused on improving safety outcomes for the people and places most at risk for harm, and focusing on some of the most intractable types of harm and violence. It includes a number of offices: the Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, which does what it sounds like it does; the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, which focuses on addressing hate and bias across 糖心传媒 and ensuring that everyone feels like 糖心传媒 can be their home; the Office of Neighborhood Safety, which focuses on gun violence prevention, or what we call community violence prevention; and then the Office of Community Mental Health, which focuses on improving access to behavioral healthcare and addressing the needs of people in moments of behavioral crisis. Pulled together, they provide a comprehensive approach to improving safety and well-being for communities that haven鈥檛 always had access to safety.

Tell us about the 988 campaign.
One of the big gaps that we鈥檙e seeing right now is that 988 has existed since 2022, but not enough people are aware of it. Use of it is increasing over time, but there鈥檚 still a long way to go, which makes sense. 911 has existed for decades and decades. It will take some time for 988 to be a go-to, burned into people鈥檚 brains in the same way. But what we鈥檝e been doing there is raising awareness about how 988 is accessible 24 hours, accessible by chat, text, phone call. When you call 988, you get someone who can provide support, counseling 鈥� connect you to long-term mental health resources. We want to make sure that people are connected to long-term care, and then if necessary, 988 can dispatch mobile crisis teams, which are teams of behavioral health professionals. They can be a mix of peers, social workers, (and) other licensed professionals who go to that person, assess what their needs are, help them in that moment in their home, at school, wherever they happen to be, and then provide additional care and, if necessary, help that person get to the hospital.

I would be remiss if I didn鈥檛 ask about the audit, but I imagine it鈥檚 something that you all have been thinking about 鈥� how to improve B-HEARD services.
The concern of the audit that B-HEARD is not as available as it should be is fair. The flipside of that is that it means that people want more of this service. If people didn鈥檛 think it was a good idea, people didn鈥檛 think what we were doing made sense, then we wouldn鈥檛 be getting audited to say that we鈥檙e not doing enough of it. The basic premise that B-HEARD should be available everywhere is a premise that we agree with, and so we鈥檙e working really closely right now with FDNY and Health + Hospitals to address the steps to growing the program. We want to make sure we鈥檙e looking at good data, identifying qualified staff, training them well, and building our capacity every step, from call triage to dispatch to being on the field to making sure that we are expanding effectively and as quickly as possible.

What sort of follow-up care is available for people regarding B-HEARD?
We make sure that once we are connecting with someone, that we have a follow-up call, that we check in. We do a patient satisfaction survey to see how we did. We also always leave people with follow-up care information, and if necessary, we are making sure that people get to hospitals. The focus of B-HEARD is making sure that in that moment someone is safe, and that we have helped them plan for what their next moment should look like. The actual program doesn鈥檛 provide ongoing care, but it makes sure that people are connected to that ongoing care.

I imagine that the NYPD is receiving fewer calls because of 988, and maybe hospitals are seeing fewer patients. Is that the case?
That isn鈥檛 data that I have. That would be a really good research study to look at whether 988 calls or other calls have reduced hospital admissions. What we are hoping is that when someone is calling 988 or when they are calling B-HEARD, we are hoping that we鈥檒l first assess whether the person is safe to stay where they are, or not necessarily just stay where they are, but to be in the community. Because we want to make sure that if someone can be in the community safely and that we can support them, that鈥檚 what we do. Sometimes that means people do have to go to the hospital, but often it means that you can keep people at home.

Any goals that you all have set? How will you know that you all are being successful?
We鈥檙e working on setting some of that work up, making sure that we have combined data across all of the teams. That鈥檚 been one of the challenges of this work of not having as good data as we need to benchmark how we鈥檙e doing. That data will help us understand core program outputs like how many people we are seeing, where we are seeing them, how long we are on the ground 鈥� all of those types of things, but much more importantly will also help us improve the program. We are also thinking about the ways in which we are connecting people to care afterward.

is a reporter covering public health in 糖心传媒 for Healthbeat. Contact Trenton at tdaniel@healthbeat.org or on the messaging app at trentondaniel.88.

The post NYC’s Plans to Expand Non-Police Crisis Response Must Be Part of a Comprehensive Community-Based Crisis System! appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

The Alliance for Rights and Recovery has joined national disability rights and housing advocates, led by the Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities (CCD) Rights and Housing Task Forces, in signing the attached comments urging the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to reverse course on proposed changes to federal homelessness funding that would move resources away from permanent supportive housing and Housing First approaches.

HUD’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program provides critical funding for supportive housing programs across 糖心传媒 and the nation, helping people with mental health and substance use challenges obtain and maintain stable housing. The proposed shift toward temporary housing, treatment requirements and greater law enforcement involvement threatens to undermine decades of progress. These changes could prevent thousands of people from accessing permanent housing and put people who are already successfully living in supportive housing at risk of losing their homes and returning to homelessness.

The Alliance strongly believes that housing is a foundation for recovery, not a reward for participating in treatment. Decades of research demonstrate that providing people with permanent housing alongside voluntary, individualized services is effective in helping them remain housed, improve their health and avoid hospitalization and incarceration. We should be expanding these opportunities, not replacing them with approaches that require people to prove they are ready for housing.

Alliance staff will be in Washington, D.C., this week meeting with national housing, mental health, substance use and disability rights advocates to develop a coordinated federal housing agenda. Together, we will work to protect existing supportive housing, oppose harmful changes to federal funding priorities, and push for greater investments in the housing and community services our communities urgently need.

As federal housing policies continue to shift, the Alliance will remain actively engaged with our national partners to protect the housing people already have, expand access for those still waiting, and ensure that federal investments advance recovery, choice and full community inclusion.

We encourage members and partners to review the attached comments, which outline the evidence supporting Housing First and permanent supportive housing and the serious concerns raised by HUD’s proposed changes. See attached for more information.聽

The post Protecting Permanent Supportive Housing and Opposing Harmful Federal Housing Policy Changes! appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

Meaningful employment is an important part of recovery, independence and full community inclusion. We believe that everyone who wants to work should have access to the opportunities, accommodations and supports they need to find and maintain employment that reflects their interests and goals.

This year’s symposium will bring together advocates, state leaders, employers and people with disabilities to explore ways to expand employment opportunities and remove barriers to workforce participation. Sessions will cover Employment First initiatives, supported employment, workplace inclusion, self-advocacy, assistive technology and the connections between community participation, health, recovery and employment. Attendees can also participate in career and resource fairs, workshops and networking opportunities.

We encourage our members and partners to attend, learn about available resources, and join the conversation about building a more inclusive workforce where people with disabilities have meaningful opportunities to work, succeed and thrive in their communities. See below for more information, including registration and schedule. 

Disability Rights & Employment Awareness Month
D.R.E.A.M. Symposium – 5th Anniversary

OCTOBER 14-15, 2026
Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY

Register here:

DAY 1 – October 14, 2026

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

鈼� Meeting Room 6 – Opening Ceremony: 糖心传媒 State (NYS) Leaders and Private Sector Employment First (E1st) Champions

9:00 AM – 3:00 PM

鈼� Meeting Room 7 – Job Preparation Assistance, Mock Interviews, Virtual Career Center, and Resume Workshop

10:00 AM – 3:00 PM

鈼� Concourse and Base of Egg – Career, Assistive Technology, and Resource Fairs

10:00 AM – 4:00 PM

鈼� Meeting Room 2 – Museum of Disability History and 糖心传媒 Disability Rights Archive Exhibits

10:15 AM – 10:30 AM

鈼� Break

10:30 AM – 11:45 AM

鈼� Meeting Room 6 – The Business of Inclusion: Private Sector Employment First Champions Share Their Stories

鈼� Meeting Room 5 – Elevating Transition: The Employment First Approach

鈼� Meeting Room 4 – This is Universal Design: Applying Universal Design to the Workplace

鈼� Meeting Room 3 – The Power of Community Participation for Health, Recovery, and Employment

11:45 AM – 1:00 PM

鈼� Fairs, Networking, and Lunch on Your Own

1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

鈼� Meeting Room 6 – Advocacy at Work: Voices, Experiences, and Pathways to Employment

2:30 PM – 2:45 PM

鈼� Break

2:45 PM – 4:00 PM

鈼� Meeting Room 6 – Employment First Implementation Update

4:00 PM – 4:30 PM

鈼� Meeting Room 6 – 504: The Musical – Exclusive Performance!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

DAY 2 – October 15, 2026

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

鈼� Meeting Room 6 – 糖心传媒 State’s Assistive Technology Innovation Center: Leveraging Emerging Technology to Support Employment First

10:00 AM – 2:00 PM

鈼� Meeting Room 2 – Museum of Disability History and 糖心传媒 Disability Rights Archive Exhibits

10:15 AM – 10:30 AM

鈼� Break

10:30 AM – 11:45 AM

鈼� Meeting Room 5 – 糖心传媒 Employment Services System (NYESS) Work Incentive Network (WIN) and Initiative Updates

鈼� Meeting Room 4 – Disability Employment in the 21st Century: What’s New and What’s Next?

鈼� Meeting Room 3 – Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)/National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) Employer Awareness Training: Working Together

11:45 AM – 1:00 PM

鈼� Networking and Lunch on Your Own

1:00 PM – 2:15 PM

鈼� Meeting Room 5 – Practice Today, Possibilities Tomorrow: Virtual Reality for Employment Readiness

鈼� Meeting Room 4 – Bridge to the Future: Preparing Youth with Disabilities for Workplace Success

鈼� Meeting Room 3 – Beyond Accommodation: Self-Advocacy, Adaptation, and Career Success

2:15 PM – 2:30 PM

鈼� Break

2:30 PM – 3:45 PM

鈼� Meeting Room 6 – United States Department of Labor Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP): Charting National Expansion of Employment Opportunity Network鈥檚 (NEON) Path – 糖心传媒’s Past and Present Collaborations to Increase Competitive and Integrated Employment (CIE)

3:45 PM – 4:00 PM

鈼� Meeting Room 6 – DREAM Closing Remarks

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sponsored by: 

The NYS Office of the Chief Disability Officer (CDO); The NYS Office for People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD); The NYS Department of Labor (DOL); The NYS Office of Mental Health (OMH); The NYS Department of Civil Service (DCS); The NYS Education Department (SED/ACCES-VR); The NYS Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS/CFB); The NYS Office of General Services (OGS); The NYS Workers鈥� Compensation Board (WCB); The NYS Division of Human Rights (DHR); The NYS Office of Employee Relations (OER); The NYS Council on Developmental Disabilities (CDD); The NYS Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV); and The Yang-Tan Institute at Cornell University.

The post Limited Spots Left! Register for The 2026 Disability Rights & Employment Awareness Month (DREAM) Symposium Today! appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

While these exemptions will help protect people, particularly those who face significant barriers to finding employment, we must do more to ensure that 糖心传媒ers understand the coming changes and have the support they need to maintain their health coverage. Many people could lose coverage simply because they are unaware of the new requirements or struggle to navigate the reporting and verification processes.

We should also view this moment as an opportunity to expand access to supported employment, education, benefits counseling and other voluntary programs that help people who want to work find and maintain meaningful employment. People with mental health and substance use challenges often face barriers to employment, but with the right individualized supports, we can successfully enter or return to the workforce. Our response should focus not simply on helping people meet new requirements, but on creating real opportunities for employment, financial stability and recovery.

The Alliance will continue closely monitoring 糖心传媒’s implementation of H.R. 1, including how the state communicates these changes, identifies eligible exemptions and protects people from unnecessary losses of health coverage. We will also continue advocating for investments in employment supports that help more 糖心传媒ers achieve their personal goals.

No one should lose access to essential healthcare because of administrative barriers or a lack of employment opportunities. 糖心传媒 must work to protect coverage while helping people access the services, supports and opportunities they need to thrive.

State Exempts 200,000 Bronx Residents from Federal Medicaid Work Rules
By Amanda D鈥橝mbrosio | Crain鈥檚 Healthcare | October 7, 2026

Roughly 200,000 Bronx residents will be exempt from federal Medicaid work requirements set to take effect Jan. 1, due to the county鈥檚 elevated unemployment rate, State Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri said Wednesday.

糖心传媒 is racing to implement federal Medicaid work requirements, which were passed in Congressional Republicans鈥� 2025 tax law, H.R. 1, before they take effect in less than three months. Starting Jan. 1, many Medicaid members will have to prove that they are working or participating in community engagement for at least 80 hours per month, or earning a household monthly income of $580, to keep their insurance.

Residents of the Bronx will not have to prove that they are working, in school or volunteering to stay enrolled in Medicaid, Bassiri said at a roundtable on H.R. 1 hosted by the United Hospital Fund.

The exemption offers relief to a county with the third-largest Medicaid population in the state, with roughly 837,000 enrollees as of August, state data shows. Roughly 200,000 of those enrollees were expected to have to comply with the rules prior to the exemption.

State health officials are pursuing exemptions for members who are eligible, including medical frailty exemptions for individuals with certain chronic conditions, and short-term hardship exemptions that apply to individuals and counties.

The federal government has allowed states to pursue these short-term hardship exemptions for counties with an unemployment rate that is more than 1.5 times the nationwide average or above 8% 鈥� a category that includes the Bronx, Bassiri said. The exemption will stay in place as long as the Bronx has an unemployment rate that meets the criteria.

糖心传媒 notified the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that it would pursue the short-term hardship exemption for the Bronx, but there is no formal approval process, said Cadence Acquaviva, a spokesperson for the Department of Health.

Approximately 2 million of the state鈥檚 6.4 million Medicaid members will have to comply with federal work requirements, according to state data. Roughly 60% of impacted enrollees live in the city.

Initial national projections show that between 10% and 20% of people who have to comply with upcoming work rules will lose their insurance, Bassiri said. But state officials are optimistic that coverage losses will be less in 糖心传媒, due to rules that allow members to self-attest their medical frailty designation and other flexibilities.

鈥淲e are not expecting 鈥� with self-attestation of medical frailty, the optional short-term hardship exemptions 鈥� that 20% of people will lose coverage,鈥� Bassiri said. 鈥淚n fact, they will not; I will say they will not.鈥�

Still, Bassiri added, there is a risk that some consumers will either be unaware of the changes or unable to go through the verification process in a timely manner, which 鈥渨e all collectively need to … be mindful of as we get closer to implementation.鈥�

Oct. 8, 2026: A previous version of this story misstated the name of United Hospital Fund. The story has been corrected.

The post Protecting Medicaid Coverage While Expanding Opportunities for Employment appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

OMH is offering a free training session, 鈥�Traditional Teachings of the Good Mind,鈥� from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Friday, November 6.

Native American Community Services has developed a framework for understanding and using the Haudenosaunee concept of living with what is referred to as Ganigohiyo or Ganikwi:yo – a 鈥楪ood Mind.鈥�  It is something that is intended to positively affect our thoughts, attitudes, actions, and behaviors. It is a way of living, a way of being 鈥� and requires a daily discipline. It is a personal and collective power for achieving 蝉办盲:苍辞帽丑 鈥� a state of peace and well-being. Therefore, if we can have more people living and working with a Good Mind, we will also have more peace and well-being individually, but also collectively within our families, across our communities, and in the world. 

Although it comes from and is presented from a Haudenosaunee perspective, it鈥檚 universal so all can access and apply its principles.

What is the Haudenosaunee Good Mind?

The Good Mind is a fundamental concept within Haudenosaunee culture that emphasizes the importance of living a life that is guided by gratitude, positivity, and peace, which can be defined as balance and harmony within ourselves, with each other, and with all of the natural world.  It鈥檚 about self-awareness and self-regulation.

The concept is rooted in the belief that every individual has the capacity to make choices that can either contribute to or detract from the well-being of themselves, those around them, and the natural world. Therefore, the Good Mind encourages individuals to cultivate positive qualities such as compassion, empathy, respect, and gratitude, while also striving to maintain the balance and reciprocity in relationships across all aspects of life.

The Haudenosaunee Good Mind also encompasses the idea of collective power and responsibility, recognizing that individuals are interconnected and that their actions can have an impact on the wider community.

This is a four-phased framework that is collaboratively inspired, but headed and developed by Native American Community Services:

• Cultural foundations and traditional teachings of a Good Mind 鈥� Understanding the concept of a Good Mind and its intent.
• Concept of a Clouded Mind and the things that can cloud it 鈥揢nderstanding the opposite of a Good Mind isn鈥檛 a bad or evil mind, but a clouded mind, and unwinding why people aren鈥檛 using a Good Mind.
• Restoring the Good Mind 鈥� Understanding how to begin rising above or removing those clouds.
• Maintaining the Good Mind 鈥� Once you restore your Good Mind, how you sustain it and understanding and realizing the true power of the Good Mind, which is the development of positive, sustainable, solutions for all.

Unseen Tears

This session will include a viewing of 鈥楿nseen Tears,鈥� which is a powerful documentary co-produced by Native American Community Services that explores the devasting impact of the Native American Residential/Boarding School era and its legacy of intergenerational trauma still impacting our Native American population. This half-hour documentary explores the various abuses experienced by residential/boarding school survivors, as well as the tragedy for those that didn鈥檛 survive. Sensitive viewing is required, as topics of abuse include mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and sexual abuse that may be triggering for survivors of such trauma. The title 鈥楿nseen Tears鈥� was chosen because nobody saw the tears of these kids crying in the dark spaces, and it also recognized the tears that still must flow for our community to heal.

The post New Link: : 鈥楾raditional Teachings of the Good Mind,鈥� 10-2:30 Nov 6 appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

The Alliance for Rights and Recovery is excited to share this opportunity to celebrate the strength and accomplishments of the peer movement and the values that continue to guide our work: mutuality, empowerment, non-judgment, hope and community.

For decades, people with lived experience have shown that recovery grows through connection, belonging, choice and opportunities to support one another. World Mental Health Day is an opportunity not only to recognize how far the peer and recovery movements have come, but also to proudly bring those values into one of the most visible public spaces in the world.

Join peers and allies on Saturday, October 10 from 12:00鈥�1:00 p.m. in Times Square, in front of 1535 Broadway between West 45th and 46th Streets. Wear some teal, bring a sign sharing what mental wellness means to you, dance along, or simply come and enjoy being part of the community!

Everyone is welcome. Come celebrate peer achievements, meet new people, have some fun and show 糖心传媒 City the power of community, connection and recovery! See below for more information.

Hi Everyone,

Join us for 30 minutes of community, movement, music, fun, and support in the heart of Times Square at the World Mental Health Day Dance Event!

When: Saturday, October 10, 2026, 12:00 pm 鈥� 1:00 pm (Eastern Time)

Where: In front of 1535 Broadway, between W. 45th and W. 46th Streets (in front of the Levi’s store)

Come together with peers and allies for an afternoon of music, community, and celebration.

Whether you’re a mental health peer or an ally, everyone is welcome to join in on our dances or just watch and be in community. No experience needed!

Wear some teal, an international color of the mental health movement. (All other clothing colors are welcome too!)

You are welcome to bring posters of what mental wellness means to you as well. NY peer artists are creating signs with the peer values on them including mutuality, empowerment, non-judgment and hope.

Get ready to groove, meet new friends, celebrate peer achievements since 1969, join in community, and support each other.

We can’t wait to be and dance with you!

Sign up for the free event here:

*Find us that day livestreaming on Roku Channel AOKTV Plus and   

 (*Please note livestreaming from Times Square can be spotty due to technology in that area.)

Thank you!

Ann

The post Celebrate World Mental Health Day in Times Square this Saturday (10/10)! appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.

We have seen the consequences of criminalizing poverty, mental health and substance use challenges, and homelessness. Policing and incarceration do little to address the underlying reasons people need help and create additional barriers to recovery and community inclusion. We need to invest instead in what people actually need: housing, accessible and desirable services, employment opportunities, peer support and meaningful opportunities to become fully integrated into their communities. The emerging approaches described in the article recognize that effective responses depend on connecting people quickly to stabilizing services, while also exposing the need for much greater investment in housing and behavioral health supports.

We are pleased that 糖心传媒 is also moving in this direction. 糖心传媒 City is developing a new community safety structure intended to bring together health-led crisis response, street outreach and connections to housing and services. Statewide, the Behavioral Health Crisis Technical Assistance Center offers another opportunity to help communities develop crisis systems that rely on non-police responders whenever appropriate, building toward the approach envisioned by Daniel鈥檚 Law.

At the same time, we should be thoughtful about how we describe this work. While the growing use of the term 鈥渃ommunity safety鈥� may help emphasize the broader benefits of prevention and early intervention, mental health and substance use services should not automatically be framed as public-safety interventions. People with mental health and substance use challenges should not be treated as inherently greater threats to community safety. That framing can reinforce the very stigma and discrimination we are trying to overcome, a concern echoed by the article鈥檚 discussion of how people with serious mental health challenges have historically been treated as sources of danger rather than people seeking support.

Changing who responds to a crisis is important. Changing what our system offers people before, during and after that crisis is even more important. We must continue building a system grounded in health, recovery, choice, dignity and true community inclusion.

As 糖心传媒 approaches its upcoming legislative and budget-making session, the Alliance will be pushing the state to increase investments in the voluntary services our communities need and to sustain and expand efforts to transform crisis response across the state. That means ensuring people can get effective help before a crisis, providing health-led and peer-supported responses when crises do occur, and having housing, services and other supports available afterward so people can successfully remain in their communities.

A New Approach to Public Safety Is Reshaping American Cities
By Tahir Duckett | The New Republic | October 5, 2026

A couple of weeks ago, that its community violence intervention work would move into the city鈥檚 community safety department, also known as CARE. The next day, Baltimore announced , which will manage the city鈥檚 violence prevention and community crisis response efforts. These cities are just the latest examples of an intriguing new trend of jurisdictions across the nation launching agencies specifically dedicated to . Just this year, and , have launched or proposed agencies that join earlier established departments and offices of community safety in Albuquerque, Durham, Greensboro, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis.

The emergence of this community safety ecosystem is one of the more striking innovations in municipal governance in recent years. Community safety agencies are beginning to consolidate jurisdictions鈥� efforts to address safety through prevention and early intervention, rather than just law enforcement. These community safety interventions include community violence intervention, a range of programs designed to prevent community violence before it happens; community crisis response, a branch of first response designed to handle a range of behavioral health crises and low-level conflicts; and victims services and homeless outreach.

What binds all of these interventions together is a recognition that the most effective way to build safer neighborhoods is to rapidly connect vulnerable populations in crisis to stabilizing services. A violence intervention worker might only have a few hours to find new housing in a neighborhood across town for a family at risk of retaliatory violence. A community crisis responder may be able to provide mediation services to resolve a dispute between neighbors before it takes a darker turn. Or she may be the best equipped to stabilize a person in the downtown corridor experiencing a mental health crisis and then connect them to long-term care.

Community safety interventions are best understood and organized separately from law enforcement鈥攏ot in opposition to law enforcement but because the draw of relying on enforcement and coercion can undermine the core ethos of community safety. The very point of these agencies is to develop city infrastructure that can intervene before law enforcement becomes necessary. These services can operate without the downsides of relying on force or coercion. Community safety and law enforcement may partner on specific initiatives, such as to deliver a co-response that pairs clinicians and officers to respond to highly volatile situations like high-acuity domestic violence calls or barricaded suspects. But ultimately, cities are wisely recognizing that trying to deliver community safety services from law enforcement agencies is not as effective as giving community safety its own home in the municipal ecosystem鈥攁nd its own well-trained personnel.

These new community safety agencies are often leveraging services that already exist, but are doing so in a way that addresses long-standing problems in municipal governance related to siloing and reliable investment in and delivery of services. Public health鈥搊riented safety interventions have often operated at a remove, scattered across鈥攁nd sometimes duplicated across鈥攙arious city departments. This disconnection has meant that the community violence intervention worker might not know whether a housing voucher is available for their vulnerable family, if they know anything about available housing services at all.

These safety interventions also have not historically received the level of investment afforded to law enforcement, and so, relatedly, they have not been held accountable for responding with the same level of urgency we expect from law enforcement. As a result, the person experiencing a mental health crisis has often faced a difficult choice: a police officer who can arrive quickly but may not be equipped to address the crisis or a trained clinician who may take hours, or days, to arrive. Traditional social services鈥攅ven those with an implication for public safety鈥攕imply were not designed for rapid response. That is beginning to change. Instead of cities considering these programs as charitable and 鈥渘ice to have,鈥� they are beginning to build them into the city鈥檚 safety infrastructure as critical assets that must be deployed as reliably, and sometimes as rapidly, as law enforcement.

In doing so, they reflect a broader understanding of safety that more closely aligns with what residents have been seeking for decades. In Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, James Forman Jr. writes about how Black communities asking for both better protection from law enforcement and better social services and neighborhood investment over the course of the last half century have been given more (although rarely better) policing, but almost nothing in the way of services and investment. Building dedicated community safety agencies that are focused on leveraging social services, prevention, and early intervention rather than enforcement can help cities take a step back in the right direction, and in a way that also better aligns with how communities are actually thinking about safety.

Politicians often wrongly assume that communities concerned about safety are solely focused on law enforcement as a solution. But both and make it clear that people also prioritize prevention and early intervention strategies, including housing, education, employment, and even the design of the built environment of the neighborhood as part of their understanding of the safety of a place. In this way, community safety agencies represent the culmination of a long-overdue effort to address these concerns as vigorously as efforts to address crime rates through enforcement.

Community safety interventions are designed to keep some of the most vulnerable people in our neighborhoods safe, to the benefit of all of us. For example, people living with serious mental illness are more vulnerable than the general population to a , including from . Despite this, our safety infrastructure has largely treated them primarily as a source of potential danger and a problem for law enforcement to solve. In a community safety framework, a moment of mental health crisis is an opportunity to get that person the help they need from someone trained to provide it鈥攁nd in a way that is most likely to lead to long-term care, reduce the likelihood of additional crises, and ultimately create a safer environment for a person in need of help.

None of this would matter if the evidence base for this work wasn鈥檛 strong鈥攁nd growing. Evaluations of crisis response programs in several cities indicate they , , and while increasing . One multisite study found the likelihood of arrest was . Countless evaluations of community violence intervention programs across the nation have shown impact. A recent study of Richmond, California鈥檚 Peacemaker Fellowship found sustained reductions in firearm violence .

The community safety field still faces several barriers to achieving its full potential. For one, the field鈥檚 interventions are only effective as long as services remain available. Community safety work is already beginning to expose the insufficiency of our decades-long underfunding of the social safety net鈥攅specially in housing and behavioral health. Policymakers have always been willing to find the money necessary to jail and imprison as many people as the police were willing to arrest. But they haven鈥檛 always been willing to find the money necessary to house and treat those who need it. That will have to change. Governments will need to figure out how to develop and deliver services at a scale commensurate with problems that have been papered over by overreliance on jails, which have become . As Moki Macias, the director of Atlanta鈥檚 Policing Alternatives and Diversion once asked me, how effective would we think the police were if they didn鈥檛 have a jail to take people to?

Community safety agencies have emerged primarily (though not at all exclusively) within city governments, raising real questions about how to develop complementary roles for federal, county, and state governments in advancing the field. This is especially the case because many of the behavioral health interventions critical to effective community safety reside in county departments. Bridging the gap and figuring out resource allocation between these county-based services and public safety鈥搊riented teams operating out of cities will be critical for long-term success. State governments will need to begin developing standards for program operations, workforce development, and protocols for partnering with other governmental entities like 911 call centers.

Perhaps most important, federal and state governments will need to develop reliable funding streams for needed community safety services, as well as operations. Current federal streams like Medicaid and Department of Housing and Urban Development housing vouchers can provide some help to budget-strapped localities, but neither program was designed with community safety in mind. Reforms will be needed to ensure these resources can be reliably used by community safety agencies. The federal government may also need to develop dedicated grants for community safety agencies, much like it does for police through the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Community Oriented Policing Services Office.

If these early successes are any indication, the field of community safety has the potential to fundamentally redefine and expand the way cities address safety concerns and improve the quality of life for everyone鈥攊ncluding an unburdened police force. Policymakers, researchers, philanthropic organizations, and community members all have a role to play in ensuring the field continues to grow. The reward for this focus could be that, for the first time, local governments could have infrastructure specifically designed to build safety through prevention and early intervention鈥攏ot just law enforcement and incarceration.

The post Prevention and Community Support Must Be at the Center of Our Response! appeared first on The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.