Announcement of an Interactive Reference Tool for Mental Health Services in New York
- Adrienne Anderson
- Aug 19
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 19
PDF version:
Challenge
It is increasingly difficult to differentiate the various programs available for people with mental illness and other behavioral health needs, especially for those who are homeless.
States and localities vary in how regularly they communicate to the public their efforts to pilot, scale, phase out, rebrand, and reconfigure such programs.
Too often, the only source of detailed, public information on a given program is an original procurement document designed for those applying to provide the service, or a press release announcing a new initiative. In the latter case, there may be mention of a new program as a brief bullet item beneath the description of a larger budget initiative, and it may be unclear when the program will begin, where it will operate, who will oversee it, and how it will differ from similar programs.
Solution
There are a number of excellent resources that categorize the purpose and operational details of various mental health initiatives. Examples of this include the New York State Office of Mental Health program definitions webpage and a New York City government webpage chronicling mental health efforts going back more than ten years. There are also many examples of recent journalistic stories that demonstrate due diligence in researching the mechanics and funding of new city-, State-, and jointly-funded programs. Yet there is little in the way of a compendium of these services and programs.
I compiled a list of dozens of services into a spreadsheet, initially focused on services targeting homeless adults with serious mental illness in New York City, and identified fields (i.e., columns) that would be useful to know about each program (i.e., row).
In preparing The Step Two Policy Project’s “Reforming Care Management for Adults with Behavioral Health Needs in New York Medicaid,” published in January, and “The Law and Practice of Assisted Outpatient Treatment, Involuntary Removal, and Involuntary Admission in New York State,” published in July, I met with subject matter experts who affirmed the concern described in the “Challenge” section, and helped identify some functional categories to group services within the tool. These categories are designed to be more intuitive and self-explanatory than the familiar administrative conventions, which can seem arbitrary or even internally inconsistent.
The product is an interactive, downloadable worksheet that organizes publicly available information about these various programs. I plan to refresh the worksheet regularly to include suggestions submitted on our website and new information published by government agencies and in news media.
Purposes
Provide an interactive, searchable reference for those working in:
healthcare and human services, including in case management
government, as staff determine which programs to introduce, amend, or close, and where to do so
journalism and media, to support their coverage of behavioral health topics
Reiterate the value of agencies’ accurate communication of recent information (including performance-related data) about various programs:
helps people in need identify programs for which they may be appropriate candidates, and waste less time finding the right resources
helps advocacy stakeholders identify programs worthy of promotion and prioritization
Current Limitations
Although we would eventually like to expand the services included in the tool, currently, it is not exhaustive.
Where known, the tool indicates whether a program/service is also present in non-NYC regions, but the exercise began with a focus on NYC.
Still, there are very few program types that exist only outside of NYC (i.e., and not within NYC), so the current approach should be more comprehensive.
The initial exercise was focused on services for adults, so there is limited coverage of services focused on age groups that include: children, youth, adolescents, transitional age youth, and alternative names for those groups.
Where known, the tool indicates whether a service type is open to youth or families.
Eventually, it will be valuable to expand this tool to coverage of a wider range of behavioral health services, but for now, it has limited coverage of substance use disorder (SUD) services, besides services that overlap with services targeting individuals with co-occurring serious mental illness.
Beyond Behavioral Health Home and Community Based Services/Community Oriented Recovery and Empowerment (BH HCBS/CORE), there is no discrete coverage of vocational services.
Homeless services are currently only captured to the extent that they target individuals with known mental health needs.
User Features
I initially built the tool in Microsoft Excel, and it works similarly to a traditional spreadsheet there. It is hosted on our website using AirTable so that it is fully functional within our Wix website environment. Anyone can utilize the sorting, grouping, and filtering features at the top of the tool. You may also wish to download a CSV file of the current version using the ellipses icon in the top banner menu of the AirTable.
Finally, please submit a suggestion if you have ideas for how to make the tool more useful, or if you would like to share information that should be updated within the tool.
