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Read the press release here.

City Mental Health Programs Now Accessible Through 'NYC Well' Hotline

By Kathleen Culliton | October 24, 2016 3:46pm
 First Lady Chirlane McCray announced the launch of NYC Well at Elmcor Youth and Adult Activities community center Monday morning.
First Lady Chirlane McCray announced the launch of NYC Well at Elmcor Youth and Adult Activities community center Monday morning.
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DNAinfo/Kathleen Culliton

FLUSHING — The city has launched a new digital access center to help New Yorkers navigate various mental health services, First Lady Chirlane McCray announced in a press conference Monday.

NYC Well is the agency within ThriveNYC — McCray’s initiative to make mental health services more accessible — that provides access through phone, text or chat to mental health professionals who can provide crisis counseling and referrals to treatment centers and other resources.

“The needs of our citizens are great and all of the treatments and services available are useful only if people can find them,” McCray said at the Elmcor Youth and Adult Activities community center Monday morning.

“NYC Well is for everyone — for you, your family and mine.”

The program will replace and expand upon LifeNet — a crisis and suicide prevention counseling hotline —  by also offering referrals to short-term counseling, the city’s mobile crisis team and substance abuse treatment programs.

It is one of 54 ThriveNYC initiatives to expand mental health coverage in New York City. Through ThriveNYC, the mayor’s office also launched a program to provide screenings for postpartum depression in city hospitals and created the $22 million program NYC Safe to connect mentally ill individuals prone to violence with proper services.

NYC Well will be accessible starting Monday in more than 200 languages 365 days of the year, 24 hours a day by calling 1 (888) NYC-WELL,  text-messaging  the word “Well” to 65173, or by visiting the program chat room hosted on the NYC Well website.

NYC Well has been in development for two years and gone through an 11-month trial run to test the technology and and various policies, according to McCray.

The launch arrived just one week after an NYPD police officer fatally shot Deborah Danner, an emotionally disturbed 66-year-old woman he had been trying to calm and potentially connect to treatment when she attacked him with a baseball bat.

“We will never know if this type of service would have helped Ms. Danners, sadly,” said McCray. “We do hope this service will help other people.”