It is all sizzling and without fillet.
First Lady Chirlane McCray’s ThriveNYC unveiled a striking new website Monday that purports to show that the $ 1.25 billion plan has “dramatically improved the landscape of mental health services in New York City in the past five years. “
But a closer look at geocoded maps and colored bar graphs in the “Dashboard” reveals missing metrics for more than two-thirds of programs, no progress for about half of initiatives, and a significant decrease in urgently needed services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
And there are only six months of data for the nearly five-year program.
“The board currently has data for the first two quarters of fiscal year 2020 because we published and began collecting data on outcome measures in early fiscal year 20,” Nicole Torres, director of external affairs for ThriveNYC, told The Post.
“More data will be added in the coming months,” he said.
“The dashboard includes service location maps for all ThriveNYC programs, all of which are new in the past five years; this is how we ‘changed the landscape of mental health,'” he added.
The site shows that serious racial inequalities persist almost five years after McCray launched ThriveNYC in November 2015.
A chart shows how poorer neighborhoods have twice as many psychiatric hospitalizations compared to wealthier sections of the city despite Thrive’s $ 220 million annual budget that focuses on helping the neediest New Yorkers.
“Normally, we could articulate how Thrive has failed us with anecdotal evidence or the number of mentally ill people on our streets,” said Council Member Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island).
“At least now, we can quantify how much success this expensive program has evaded,” said Borelli.
Placeholders like “coming in the summer of 2020” filled in the gaps where the data should have been in 23 of the 31 shows, even though it’s mid-summer.
Several programs showed a decrease in the number of people served or the percentage of people who say they received help between the last three months of 2019 and the first three months of 2020, including mental health services for veterans.
For example, ThriveNYC connected 2,593 veterans to services during the first quarter, but only 736 former military personnel received help during the second quarter. The percentage of veterinarians who sought and obtained services also decreased from 83 percent to 74 percent during the same period.
Torres said commitment numbers were higher during the first quarter due to a special outreach program to enroll veterans in reduced-cost Metrocards.
One of ThriveNYC’s signature programs, the NYC Well Mental Health Hotline, received 6,500 fewer calls during the first three months of this year, including the start of the pandemic than the latter part of 2019.
The percentage of people who said they were satisfied with the service also decreased from 91 percent to 77 percent.
“There is a normal quarter-to-quarter variation in calls to NYC Well,” Torres said. “The helpline is still on track to meet its annual goal.”
A second councilman told The Post that the new website is a testament to the program’s mistakes, rather than the achievements.
“If this is what Chirlane and her co-mayor husband are calling a success, then they need to seek their own advice,” joked Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens).
“This new site highlights inequalities in access to mental health care, clearly showing that Thrive has failed to improve the situation with five years and $ 1 billion to work.
“New Yorkers are sick and tired of their Marxist turn where their politburo cannot be wrong. It is time for them to pack up their weary ThriveNYC act and try to sell it elsewhere, ”Holden said.
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