Diminishing NYS Public Mental Health Sector
Decades of austerity measures and privatization have reduced funding for public sector employees across all agencies in New York State. Increasingly, state agencies have outsourced work traditionally done by public sector employees to private contractors, and localities have been forced to cut or limit services on account of budget cutbacks or shortfalls, resulting in a loss of public sector jobs. The mental healthcare sector exemplifies this trend, as policymakers’ goals of reducing public spending and healthcare costs have intersected with changing models of care provision, ultimately shrinking the public sector mental healthcare workforce.