Mental Health, Office of

Agency Web Site: http://www.omh.ny.gov/

Mission

The Office of Mental Health’s (OMH) mission is to promote the mental health of all New Yorkers, with a particular focus on providing hope and recovery for adults and children with serious mental illness or emotional disturbances.

Budget Highlights

The Executive Budget recommends $3.6 billion in All Funds appropriations for the Office of Mental Health (OMH) a net increase of $4.7 million from 2012-13. The Executive Budget also recommends a total workforce of 14,580 FTE.

OMH is committed to providing critical mental health services to individuals who need treatment. OMH continues to provide both community and inpatient services, and supports both voluntary and court-ordered treatment through Kendra’s Law, for individuals who may have difficulty living safely in the community without close monitoring and mandatory participation in treatment.

OMH continues to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of its operations and the network of non-profit providers it supports, and has ongoing efforts to reform or restructure activities based on a review of its core mission. Major new budget actions to promote quality care and treatment include funding for additional supported apartments, creation of regional centers of excellence for inpatient treatment, enhanced community services for individuals on AOT and leaving OMH facilities, and establishment of multi-disciplinary incident review panels for serious incidents involving a person with mental illness.

The Executive Budget continues efforts to lower State Operations and Local Assistance costs via stringent cost controls and reduced use of inpatient services. The Executive Budget maintains current levels of funding for certain programs rather than provide increases scheduled for 2013-14, and defers the planned 1.4 percent annual human services COLA.

The Budget reflects the creation of regional centers of excellence for the diagnosis and treatment of complex behavioral health illnesses. This effort will ensure there will be ample capacity for treating individuals with mental illness who require inpatient services, and the savings related to the State Psychiatric Center regionalization initiative will be reinvested to support the same or greater level of community-based services. This reinvestment will help facilitate earlier and better access to care.

The Executive Budget also reduces agency administrative staffing levels and places stricter controls on NPS spending. It reduces spending growth for the sex offender program through more efficient operations. The Executive Budget also proposes to make permanent the current exemption for certain social work and mental health professional licensure requirements of persons employed by a program or service operated, regulated, funded, or approved by OMH, and/or local governmental units or social services districts.

The Executive Budget continues the development of 1,000 supported housing units for residents of nursing homes (400 by the end of 2014); and 4,000 supported housing beds for individuals in adult homes (1,400 by the end of 2014); and 3,400 beds for homeless housing in New York City (634 by the end of 2014). The Executive Budget also proposes continuing to recover Medicaid exempt income from providers operating community residential programs.

For more information on this agency's budget recommendations located in the Executive Budget Briefing Book, click on the following link:

Briefing Book – Mental Hygiene (PDF)

Note: Most recent estimates as of 01/22/2013

Click for additional detailed appropriation tables