Psychiatric Institutions, Mental Health Shelters and Hospitals in New York City: After the 2022 Incendiary Case of Michelle Go, Close Encounters with a Financial Consultant

The January 2022 killing of Michelle Go, a financial consultant who was shoved in front of an oncoming subway train, stirred public outrage and led to official promises of reform. The same kind of institutional breakdown that has preceded scores of other attacks was the cause of the state psychiatric facility where the man who killed her had been hospitalized.

The reporters scrutinized each case, conducting more than 250 interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of pages of confidential treatment records and visiting courthouses, jails, prisons and a psychiatric ward. The lack of public information about the incidents made it difficult to evaluate about a quarter of the cases. Still, the examination identified 94 instances in the past decade in which breakdowns of the city’s social safety net preceded the violence, sometimes by just days or hours.

The state began shutting down its notorious psychiatric institutions in the 1960s, which caused the major elements of the safety net to come together. They consist of homeless shelters, private and public hospitals that are tasked with stabilizing people in crises and specialized treatment teams that are designed to function as mobile mental health clinics.

The results can be disastrous. A man who was supposed to be placed in a mental health shelter was shuttled to other shelters when his mental health deteriorated. In August 2021, he used a hammer to attack a stranger on a subway platform in Union Square, badly injuring him.

New York City’s sprawling shelter system relies on some 600 sites operated by nonprofit contractors across the city. 37 mental health shelters, staffed by psychiatrists and social workers, are expected to cost taxpayers about $250 million a year.

But the Times examination found a widespread failure by the agencies to share information, even though New York State created a detailed database years ago for that purpose. The pattern of agencies taking the narrowest approach to care and not fully funding programs led to understaffing and harried treatment.