The largest expansion of state-run inpatient psychiatric beds in decades took place this winter, accelerating the growth of long-term institutions under Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The Office of Mental Health added 125 beds in psychiatric institutions across the state between December and March, the Hochul Administration said on Thursday. The pace of the expansion is greater than at any point in the last 20 years, during which the number of beds operated by the state steadily declined.
Close to half the beds are in adult centers, 15 are at the Rockland Children’s Psychiatric Center and 50 more are in units for people entering through the criminal legal system.
The beds will cost $31.6 million annually to operate, according to Office of Mental Health spokesman Justin Mason. That spending comes as the Trump administration takes a $27 million bite out of the OMH budget for homeless services, crisis stabilization beds and the state’s 988 mental health call line.
In the city, 25 beds were added to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, a more than 300-bed facility in Bayside, Queens, with another 25 beds at Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Ward’s Island, which houses people entering from Rikers Island and the city jail system. The new beds at Kirby partially reverse the downsizing that took place in 2020, resulting in more people from the justice system being sent to other institutions.
Hochul has sought to increase the number of short- and long-term psychiatric beds since taking office, first focusing on inducing private hospitals to restore beds that had been converted during the height of the pandemic. While more than 400 of those beds, which are used for days- or weekslong holds, remain offline, the state has focused additional resources to expanding institutional beds, in which patients may be admitted for months or years.
Hochul has been vocal about the need for more forms of involuntary commitment and treatment to the most severe untreated mental illness outside of a hospital setting, seeking policy changes in the state budget that have become key sticking points in negotiations with legislative leaders. That includes making it easier for police to remove homeless people to a hospital and expand the base of clinicians who can commit them. The new beds are intended for people who have stabilized after a crisis and others who are deemed unfit to stand trial, part of Hochul’s broader $1 billion mental health agenda, which includes specialized housing, residential services and intensive mobile outreach.
In total the Hochul administration has added 325 beds to state-run institutions, and is planning to add 75 more for people who are homelessness at Creedmoor next year, according to the governor’s office.
