Mayor Adams Announces Progress in Supporting Individuals With Severe Mental Illness, Releases City’s First-Ever Involuntary Transports Dashboard Providing New Yorkers With Unprecedented Accounting of Program

August 13, 2025

Dashboard Allows New Yorkers to Track Trends in Involuntary Transports, Better Understand How City Connects Individuals With Emergency Psychiatric Care

Nearly 11,800 Involuntary Transports Reported Since January 2024, Including Over 1,600 Originating from New York City’s Public Transportation System

New York City’s Subway Outreach Program Reached17,700 Contacts and Provided Services Over 5,400 Times 

Part of Administration’s “End Culture of Anything Goes Campaign,” Highlighting Mayor Adams’ Efforts to Change Culture, Laws, and Investments That Have Allowed for Public Disorder on City Streets 

NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health (OCMH) Executive Director Eva Wong today released the city’s first-ever Involuntary Transports Dashboard, offering the public unprecedented access to data on involuntary transports for hospital evaluation of individuals appearing to be mentally ill and behaving in a manner likely to result in serious harm to themselves or others. The new dashboard reflects the Adams administration’s commitment to transparency on involuntary transports, providing data that no previous administration has ever shared before. Mayor Adams has implemented a bold vision to do everything in the city’s power to support those with severe mental illness by, among other things, launching new outreach programs, like Subway Co-Response Outreach Teams (SCOUT) and Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness, to connect with the hardest to reach New Yorkers. Since launching PATH, the city has made over 17,700 contacts with unhoused New Yorkers, providing services over 5,400 times.

The launch of the dashboard continues Mayor Adams’ “End the Culture of Anything Goes” campaign, which highlights the work the administration has done to change the culture and laws that prevented people with severe mental illness from getting the help they needed while making the investments necessary to support outreach, harm reduction, wraparound services, and housing to make lasting impacts in lives and communities. Mayor Adams is bringing the same energy and approach that proved to be successful in carving a new path to help people with severe mental illness to address other health crises playing out on city streets, and he will soon lay out how he plans to realize that vision. As part of the week-long campaign, Mayor Adams already announced the expansion of the New York City Police Department’s Quality of Life Division across Queens, as well as the city’s milestone achievement of connecting over 3,500 homeless New Yorkers to permanent housing, and the opening of 13 clubhouses across the five boroughs to engage adults living with severe mental illness. 

“Since the beginning, our administration has said that the days of ignoring people in need of help were over. We have made major strides in accomplishing that vision by implementing effective programs at the city level, getting key amendments passed to state law, and changing the very culture that is now allowing more people to get the help they need and deserve, even when they don’t recognize that need themselves. But a key part of this work requires a level of transparency and accountability that we have also always been committed to,” said Mayor Adams. “We are the first administration to ever report on involuntary transports, and now, we are taking that one step further, with the creation of the Involuntary Transports Dashboard, which will be a public resource where anyone can look at data from multiple agencies over time. We are working every day to make New York a safer city, and it’s clear that our laser focus on supporting people with severe mental illness from the very start has not only done just that, but has also made our city a more compassionate and supportive one for our most vulnerable.”

“The Adams administration continues to build on its unwavering commitment to our city’s most vulnerable, ensuring that those facing mental health crises — from acute episodes to chronic conditions leading to severe self-neglect — receive the critical care they deserve, while safety for all New Yorkers in public spaces remains a significant priority,” said OCMH Executive Director Wong. “The launch of the Involuntary Transports Dashboard reflects the city’s strategic focus on transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement in coordinated agency response to urgent and multifaceted needs.”

The dashboard aggregates data from multiple city and state agencies — including the New York City Police Department, the Metropolitan Transit Authority Police, the New York City Department of Homeless Services, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and NYC Health + Hospitals, which all respond to mental health emergencies. By analyzing involuntary transport data over time, the city aims to identify patterns, assess the impact of interventions, and inform future mental health and public safety policies. As seen in the dashboard, the number of 9.58 clinician-led transports increased each month since launching the city’s PATH and SCOUT programs. In addition, the majority of 9.41 NYPD officer-led transports are the result of calls to 911 for help.

In January 2025, the Adams administration released the first Involuntary Transports Annual Report, which showed that, in 2024, there were 7,700 involuntary transports to the hospital for emergency psychiatric evaluation. The dashboard takes this report a step further, showing monthly data on how and from where these transports were initiated and subsequently ended. Between January 2024 — when the city started tracking this data — and May 2025, there have been nearly 11,800 involuntary transports reported across agencies, including over 1,600 originating in the public transit system.

The data in the dashboard represents transports — not individuals — as the same person can be transported multiple times. Likewise, a large portion of such transports originate from 911 calls, and the vast majority come from 911 calls originating from private dwellings. In contrast, Mayor Adams has launched outreach programs, such as PATH, which operate in the subway system, in an effort to reach the hardest to reach New Yorkers and offer services to unsheltered New Yorkers, including facilitating involuntary transports to a hospital, when necessary. Data on the dashboard will be updated every month, however, because of how agencies collect and report data, users should expect a three-month lag.

Mayor Adams was one of the first – and loudest – voices to call for wider use of involuntary transports and commitments, when appropriate, to help people get help when they don’t recognize their own need for it. In the second month of the Adams administration, the city announced its “Subway Safety Plan” to address unsheltered homelessness. Later that year, the administration released a major policy shift for the city that expanded the city’s efforts to get people who need care but don’t realize it help involuntarily. Following three years of relentless advocacy by the Adams administration in Albany, the administration was successful this year in passing amendments to the state’s involuntary commitment law that now make the guidance more explicit under state law.

The Adams administration has undertaken many efforts to strengthen mental health operations and transparency over the last three years. Since the launch of Mayor Adams’ “Subway Safety Plan,” over 8,400 New Yorkers have been connected to shelter, and over 1,000 are now in permanent affordable housing. Further, since the start of the Adams administration, the city has opened 1,400 Safe Haven and stabilization beds and invested in a $650 million homelessness and mental health plan to give those receiving treatment supportive and therapeutic places to go after being discharged from the hospital. 

Alongside the Adams administration’s focus on mental health, in 2023, Mayor Adams launched “HealthyNYC,” an ambitious plan to extend the average lifespan of all New Yorkers to 83 by 2030. The effort sets ambitious targets to address the greatest drivers of premature death, including chronic and diet-related diseases, screenable cancers, maternal mortality, and reducing the impact of mental health-related deaths like overdoses, suicide, and violence. Additionally, HealthyNYC expands access to culturally-responsive mental health care and social support services, including early intervention for communities of color and LGBTQIA+ youth, and helps address the impact of social media on youth mental health and suicidal ideation to reduce suicide deaths.

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