Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces 1,000 Psychiatric Beds Opened Across New York Since Taking Office

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced the opening of a new state-funded 21-bed inpatient psychiatric facility to serve youth at the New York City Children’s Center campus in the Bronx. Operated by Montefiore Medical Center with funding from the state, the 18,300-square-foot facility represents a unique collaboration to serve young people experiencing serious behavioral health issues and will bring the total inpatient capacity brought online by Governor Hochul to 1,000 beds statewide.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor’s Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

 Thank you, Dr. Ozuah. It is so great to be back here, and I'm proud we could keep that commitment because it's a commitment that's not just words — it's a commitment to people. And our belief that everyone deserves high quality health care, particularly in a space known as mental health, because it's been overlooked for so many decades. Investments should have been made that were not, and, as a result, we have more people struggling who could have had interventions as children, and freed them from a lifetime of needing additional care — but that day starts now, especially here in the Bronx.

I have spent the entire day in the Bronx. We've just come from hurricane relief for Jamaica. We have the largest Jamaican population outside Jamaica — 200,000 mostly here in the Bronx. We want to support those individuals. I was with the Borough President as we talked about $5 million to open a brand new birthing center in the Bronx to help mothers and babies have better outcomes in life.

But this is a place I'm proud to be. And Dr. Ozuah — leadership really matters, and your voice and your leadership of this extraordinary organization, Montefiore Einstein, is a place where compassion just oozes out of every individual associated with it. I can see it. I can feel it when I walk into rooms. People care deeply about others, and I want to thank you for leading this organization.

We also have someone who leads an important organization for me as well. The Office of Mental Health has been not invested in the way I think it should have been for many years. But we have a great champion — come on over here, our Commissioner, Dr. Ann Marie Sullivan. As I mentioned, we have our Borough President. We have Senator Fernandez here, Assemblymember Benedetto, as well as I think our Assemblymember’s here. Is she still here? Is our — Assemblymember Aldebol.

Let's talk about a couple of things that are important to me. As I mentioned, when I first became Governor in 2021, we were still in the throes of the pandemic, and we had a lot of people that were falling between the cracks. There was not attention to mental health. Our subways had become rolling homeless shelters for people in severe distress, but there was no place to put them. So many beds had been converted to COVID beds, so they were literally lost. These individuals had no place to go for care.

And I spoke to the Commissioner about this and my team, I said, “Now that the pandemic's over, we have to get those beds back online and create new beds because we have a severe shortage here in the State of New York.” And it's not something I was proud of. I said, “We have to do this.” So we invested $1 billion — the highest amount ever committed to mental health in the State of New York — because we need to take a system that had been long forgotten and ignored, and elevate it and let people know there should not be stigma associated with getting mental health services because life is hard. At any point, someone could just say, “I need a little extra help,” and not have to feel embarrassed or ashamed to have to seek that out.

So I want to continue focusing on that. But we have to have a place where our incredible practitioners, our doctors, our nurses, our health care teams can work, and to have those services brought in a warm, nurturing place. That's what this is today. That's what we're talking about.

And I was asking where we had the space from. It was underutilized, and to invest in it — it was $29 million of state dollars to open up these 21 beds. Now when you walk in there — a young person who feels like they've been abandoned, forgotten, that they don't have worth, they walk in here and it is beautiful. It is calming. I even felt calm walking through there. There are beautiful pictures on the walls, and the furniture, the selection, the rooms — I notice all these things. I like to decorate, and you did an incredible job creating an environment of healing, nurturing and love. And I commend all of you for that because people need help.

And I'm investing in school-based mental health services. I'm working on eating disorder problems. We're working on peer-to-peer programs. We've invested much there. But also, something as simple as saying “it does not make sense to me that children have in their hands all day long during the school day,” that they have a cell phone that is resulting in so many young people being bullied, and tormented, and feeling the stigma, or their embarrassment or FOMO. And they're not being invited into the girls' room and have a meeting about what they're going to do on Friday.

It takes its toll on our young people. And why do I know this? I started, when I first became Governor, with the mental health roundtable, talking to teenage girls here in the Bronx with our Commissioner. Remember, we did that? Yep. And we're talking about young people who were contemplating suicide — particularly high number of Latinas who feel particular cultural stress from their parents' upbringing and how they were trying to raise them in a very different society than their home country.

So kids are under stress. Being a teenager is hard enough. You compound it with cultural changes for a family; you compound it with these cell phone distractions that are keeping our kids from just making friendships in person and making eye contact? And emerging out of school as a normal functioning adult that they used to before they were held now captive to these addictive algorithms.

We have taken on that issue in New York and we are winning. We're taking back our kids. We're giving them the freedom to be children once again. And when they need help, their parents know there's a place for them to go. So this is where children — who are right now maybe in an emergency room, the parents are stressed out, who is going to take care of them? I am proud that with this ribbon cutting today, we are doubling the amount of beds right here in the Bronx so no one will be turned away. The help, the love and the support are right here.

Our next speaker is a young man I just had a chance to meet. He took the brave step forward of seeking help. He has a mom who cares deeply about him. He's on the road to recovery with a lot of support from loving people. He's here to tell his story, and I hope it inspires others to remind them it's okay to ask for help.

It's okay at this moment in time to not feel you're 100 percent okay because you'll get there. We know how to get you there. Just don't give up. Don't give up on yourself. Don't give up on life, because we will create the system — a compassionate system like we have right behind me here — it's going to lift you up and give you a whole new lease on life.

Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Joziah Morales.