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Q&A
Proposed changes to improve mental health care in jails
0:13:02
ยท
82 sec
Dr. Stossel discusses proposed changes to improve mental health care in NYC jails, focusing on two new specialized units: GATE and STEP.
- GATE is designed to be a substance use unit, while STEP is intended to be a therapeutic housing unit between general population and mental observation.
- These units aim to cohort groups of individuals who can live and work well together, increasing access to care.
- Dr. Stossel emphasizes that these units would help create stability in the mental health population and more efficiently use resources from both the Department of Corrections and Correctional Health Services.
Keith Powers
0:13:02
Got it.
0:13:03
If you had to make one change inside of our city jails right now around mental health, what would it be?
Dr. Lauren Stossel
0:13:07
Sorry, one change?
Keith Powers
0:13:08
If you had to make one change from the Board of Corrections, if you joined the Board of Corrections around mental health, what would it be?
Dr. Lauren Stossel
0:13:14
I think probably something that CHS was working towards when I left.
0:13:20
We had ideas for two units.
0:13:23
One was called GATE which was designed to be a substance use unit and one was called STEP which was designed to be a therapeutic housing unit between general population and mental observation.
0:13:38
I think those units would have gone a very, very long way towards cohorting groups of individuals who were going to live and work well together and would have increased access to care because mental health treatment providers would have been able to provide care safely on those units.
0:13:57
So those are people who tend to bounce back and forth between general population and mental observation units.
0:14:04
They take an enormous amount of resources from Department of Corrections and Correctional Health Services, And having an opportunity to cohort those individuals together and provide care directly on those housing units, I think, have gone a really long way towards creating stability in the mental health population in the jails overall.