NYC Mayor Adams announces new mental health plan with teen virtual care, more ‘clubhouses’ to connect with jobs, education

New York City will triple the number of clubhouses for people with severe mental health issues and create a new virtual mental health care service for teens under a new policy Mayor Adams announced Thursday.

The three-pronged plan will also focus on strengthening harm reduction programs to better address the crisis in overdose deaths that’s plagued the city in recent years.

Adams framed the initiatives against the backdrop of the COVID pandemic, which further exacerbated problems for people dealing with mental health challenges.

“We realize that this mental health crisis started long before the pandemic,” he noted. “The change begins with us now.”

An overarching goal of the plan, which was first reported in Politico last week, will be to reduce overdose deaths by 15% over the next four years.

Adams alluded to the fact that the city saw the most overdoses on record in 2021 and said the city must “ramp up” efforts to prevent fatal ODs. As he has in the past, he singled out fentanyl as of particular concern.

“Our city must be a place where substance use does not lead to death, but can be treated and overcome.”

To help combat overdose deaths — many of which are a result of other drugs laced with fentanyl — Adams said he would expand “drug-checking” services and create Public Health Vending Machines to distribute naloxone, which is used to reverse the effects of an overdose.

The new initiatives will be paid for with $20 million in “new commitments” and builds on $370 million in separate funding from the city, according to Adams.

The expansion of clubhouses — which connect people with severe mental illness with jobs, education and structure — is a key part of the new policy.

Clubhouses have been offered by the non-profit Fountain House over the years, and the city’s Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan served as CEO there before joining Adams’ administration.