 My fellow New Yorkers, today I want to speak to you about the next phase of our plan to address mental health in this city, a plan which has been long been needed but is only now being reckoned with. Three years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic began here in our city, killing thousands of New Yorkers and eventually over a million Americans. The fear and trauma were overwhelming, especially for those on the front lines and those with fewer resources. Overnight, New Yorkers lost their livelihoods, their support networks, and people they loved. Our city was empty and our hospital beds were full. All of us experienced uncertainty, stress, and isolation. And thousands more experienced grief and economic insecurity on a scale unseen in generations. Mental health became part of our everyday conversation. And as we recover and rebuild, we have come to a deeper understanding that we must focus on the brain as much as the body. We must address the whole person, the whole system. We saw how the injustices of the past were magnifying the impacts of COVID-19 from unequal health outcomes to addition, violence, and educational disparities. We realized that this mental health crisis started long before the pandemic and that we will have to change the way we approach mental health as a city, as a community. That change begins now with us. Today we are releasing a comprehensive report that will outline the second phase of our mental health plan. This report, care, community, action, a mental health plan for New York City. This plan is the result of an intensive interagency effort over the last year, one that drew on every part of our city government. From our healthcare experts to our first responders and our educators, we look for gaps in care and ways to get people mentally healthy and physically healthy. This report focuses on three main areas. One, actively promoting the mental health of our children and families through prevention and intervention. Two, addressing addiction and the overdose crisis. And three, expanding support for New Yorkers suffering from serious mental illness. I want to thank everyone who worked so hard to put this plan together, including the public health leadership of Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services, Anne William Isom, Health Commissioner Dr. Oswin Fassan, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York City Health and Hospitals President and CEO Dr. Mitch Katz and the entire HNH team, our dedicated city and state agencies, our value community partners and people who lived but experienced mental health needs. The entire text of this plan is available online at nyc.gov slash mental health for NYC. I want to highlight some of the approaches we'll be using to support mental health in key areas. So often I talk about addressing problems upstream instead of trying to solve them downstream. A healthy city begins with equity, good jobs, good schools and affordable housing. Knowing can be expected to thrive mentally and emotionally if they don't know where their next paycheck or next meal will come from. This is an issue that touches every aspect of our lives and it starts with our youth. We've all seen the isolation and trauma that children have experienced over the past several years along with the results, disappearing into screens, behavioral issues and even suicide. Year after year, suicide is increasing as a cause of death for young people. As of 2020, suicide is the second leading cause for adolescents 10 to 14 years old. Right behind gun violence, the number one killer of our youth, 9.2% of New York City public high school students reported attempted suicide in 2021 alone. This is a major crisis that we cannot ignore. We must take action to address youth mental health now. That is why we are going to use our public schools as our first line of defense, expanding school-based mental health clinics and providing social-emotional learning and screening for interventions. We are also going to launch a comprehensive and accessible telehealth program for high school students. Create a youth suicide prevention pilot program and increase youth suicide prevention data resources and tracking capacity. We're going to make it easier for young people to get help in healing before it's too late. We're going to let children in crisis and not going to allow them to fall through the cracks of the system. This won't happen. We're also going to examine the potential risk of social media to our children's mental health and work to make sure tech companies are required to keep online spaces safe for our kids. Our second area of focus is substance use and the overdose crisis. Across this nation, we see the effects of addiction. From small-town America to the sidewalks of our biggest cities, opioid use is skyrocketing. Illegal drugs are often contaminated with toxic levels of fentanyl or other dangerous substances. And overdoses have hit historic levels everywhere, including New York City. 2021 was the worst year on record for overdose deaths in our city. And drug-related death is the leading cause of mortality among people experiencing homelessness in our city. We cannot allow this crisis to continue taking lives and destroying communities. We must ramp up our efforts to prevent fatal overdoses and get treatment to people who need it. This plan would expand proven harm reduction and treatment strategies with the goal of reducing overdose deaths in New York City by 15 percent by 2025, saving lives, dreams and families. We're going to increase the availability of overdose reversal drugs, especially in high-risk areas, provide more medication for opioid use disorder, as well as clean syringes and other safety supplies, and reduce the risk of overdose by expanding the distribution of fentanyl test strips that will alert users to dangerous levels of the drugs before it's too late. We also support the opening of more harm reduction hubs and overdose prevention centers. These spaces will provide those in crisis with low-barrier assistance and decrease the chance of overdosing through treatment and recovery options. We also support and invest in people returning to the community from jails and prisons with more job training and housing support. We want New Yorkers to have access to the services they need when they need them, including mental health services and drug treatment options. And that includes New Yorkers who may be uninsured or underinsured. Our city must be a place where substance use does not lead to death but can be treated and overcome. And we need a mental health and social service system that leads to fewer people developing substance use problems in the first place. Third, we must continue our effort to help New Yorkers suffer from serious mental illness, get the treatment they need, including inpatient care. More than 250,000 New Yorkers live with a diagnosis of serious mental illness. And nearly 40% of those affected are not engaged in treatment. This must change for their health, their families, and our city. In November, when I laid out my plan to help those with serious mental illness who are living on the street, I said it was just the beginning. This is the next phase of how we are going to help people in need before they fall into crisis by ensuring everyone has access to health care, community, and a home. To support people with serious mental illness and their families, we're going to improve access to specialty care and primary care regardless of need. New York City Health and Hospitals, which already provides 55% of all the mental health beds for New York City, will be expanding capacity in the coming months to meet demand. We'll also increase the city's crisis services, including adding additional peers to mobile crisis teams and expanding the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division, or be heard as we call it. This means responding to mental health emergencies with mental health professionals and emergency medical technicians while decreasing unnecessary use of police services. For people with serious mental illness, help doesn't mean a single intervention. City is critical. We currently have a network of spaces called clubhouses that assist people with employment, education, and skills building. Most of all, they provide a community. Under this plan, I'm proud to announce we will significantly expand the number of clubhouse spaces across the city. We will expand stable housing options available to New Yorkers with serious mental health illnesses and add an additional 8,000 units of supportive housing, as well as more opportunities for education and employment. Finally, we'll increase support to families impacted by those with serious mental illness, many of whom have struggled for far too long with supportive and the support they need for a family memory crisis. This plan is the next step on a long journey to center mental health and human well-being at the core of our city and the city that we love. In the near future, we'll also be looking at new research about the impact of diet has on mental health and making plans to support a healthy lifestyle for our bodies and our minds. The pain of the pandemic was real, and this is one way we will turn it into purpose. Addressing mental health will allow us to build a better city from the ground up with more opportunity, housing, and education. Add a new focus on equity and justice, and create a more responsive and integrated mental health system that addresses New Yorkers' needs across the spectrum. The New York state of mind has always been resilient, but we intend to make it even stronger going forward. That's getting stuff done for our bodies, for our minds, and our souls. God bless you all.