NEW YORK: ‘NYC Well’ is NYC’s New 24/7 Mental Health Hotline

November 04, 2016

News Type:  Weekly Spark, Weekly Spark News
Speaker:  New York

Gothamist

New York City has established a new mental health hotline called NYC Well that provides free, confidential, around-the-clock assistance to individuals in distress. Accessible via phone, text, or chat in more than 200 languages, NYC Well offers crisis and suicide prevention counseling, behavioral health referrals, mobile crisis teams, follow-up support, brief counseling, and peer support. Expanding the services provided by the city’s previous crisis hotline, it represents a key component of the Thrive NYC initiative, which aims to reduce negative associations with addiction and mental illness and increase access to services. “This is a groundbreaking program that addresses an important unmet need,” commented Sandro Galea, dean and Robert A. Knox professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “We know that one of the biggest barriers to getting appropriate mental health treatment is the availability of readily available mental health services. NYC Well bridges that gap. It is a bold, innovative program in keeping with the tradition of excellence long embodied by the NYC Health Department.”

Spark Extra! Learn more about crisis centers/services.