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On Thursday, a judge deemed Bronx resident Waldo Mejia unfit to stand trial and ordered him into psychiatric treatment. His alleged crime is shocking, even by the depraved standards of mental health mayhem in New York.
According to police, 14-year-old Caleb Rijos was walking to school one morning this past January when Mejia, unprovoked, fatally stabbed Rijos in the chest.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An innocent victim is murdered, a family permanently traumatized, and a perpetrator who should have been the responsibility of the mental health system becomes entrusted to the criminal justice system instead.
During this year’s state budget cycle, legislators have been weighing Mayor Adams’ proposal, put forth by Gov. Hochul, to expand access to involuntary psychiatric care.
According to a poll published earlier this week by The Association for a Better New York, 88% of New Yorkers support this change. Democrats actually favor it at a higher rate (90%) than Republicans (81%).
Passage remains doubtful, though.
Back in January, just a few days after Caleb Rijos’ stabbing, state Sen. Samra Brouk (D-Rochester), chair of the Senate Mental Health Committee, asserted, “I will continue to oppose efforts to put people into forced treatment or forced detention through an expansion of involuntary commitment because we know coerced treatment does not work.”
There’s not been much movement since. The backing of the mayor and governor, overwhelming support of the public, and the horrific death of a schoolchild aren’t enough.
In their budget proposals, released last week, both houses of the state Legislature rejected Hochul’s proposal to loosen involuntary treatment standards.
Albany progressives remain dug in on the notion that more money for voluntary community services cures all.
Republicans must bear some blame for America’s mental health dysfunction, most notably in their unwillingness to spend more on programs to benefit the seriously mentally ill.
But in New York, progressive ideology, far more than any other factor, is what’s holding back mental health reform.
That ideology continues to wrap the narrative about violence and mental illness.
Whenever a brutal crime appears to have been committed by someone with untreated psychosis, lefty advocates mobilize to insist that there is no important connection between violence and mental illness.
In fact, they say, those who claim there is a connection are the real problem because they perpetuate stigmas.
Advocates are especially fond of the counterargument that there’s no connection because the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
Which is not a counterargument. Someone can be both unusually dangerous and more likely to be a victim of violence than the average American — which is the case with adults with untreated serious mental illness.
What we see in the mental-health debate is evidence that misinformation activism is alive and well in America, even after Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and Trump’s victory in November 2024.
The solution is treatment. For some, such as the Waldo Mejias of the world, that will likely have to mean involuntary treatment.
At his arraignment, Mejia declared “I’m with Satan!”
There are those with diagnosed mental disorders but not serious ones who can function well enough in society.
Others have serious mental illnesses but respond well to treatment and can be relied on to use the clinics, clubhouses, group therapy, housing programs and other community resources made available to them.
But many of the seriously mentally ill are so sick that they do not even accept their diagnosis, much less the need to comply with medication.
That’s why, though we don’t typically consider involuntary care for ordinary medical conditions, serious mental illness is a different ballgame.
This year, we’ve seen some progressive candidates for mayor distance themselves from their defund-era positions, in response to New Yorkers’ crime concerns. Preventing involuntary psychiatric hospital care is an even older progressive position, dating back decades.
A reversal is long overdue. Until then, the misery on the streets continues.
Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a 2024–25 Public Scholar at The City College of New York’s Moynihan Center.