As an op-ed being published nearly today points out, May 1 marks the start of Mental Health Awareness Month. And this May 1 also marks one year since Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny met on a F train, ruining two lives.

Neely, the homeless man known for his Michael Jackson impersonation, was killed by Penny, a former Marine who tried to subdue Neely when he was acting erratically on the train and put him in a chokehold, causing his death. Penny now faces manslaughter charges and will appear next in court in September.

A deeply troubled soul, who did not deserve to die, Neely had been in and out of mental health care and had been arrested and charged with a violent crime of punching a 67-year-old woman, breaking her nose, spending time in jail before he entered a treatment program, which he soon walked away from.

Neely was on the city’s list of the 50 most at-risk homeless individuals and considered a possible danger to himself and others. There was a pending arrest warrant for him, but his whereabouts were unknown until he died on that F train.

Anyone who rides the subway with any frequency has encountered people in need of mental health care. Sometimes they are mumbling. Sometimes they are screaming. Sometimes they are threatening. Sometimes they are withdrawn. But they are all not well and riding around on the trains is neither a treatment nor a cure. But it may be the only place they have to go.

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli a few weeks ago issued a report showing the statewide capacity for inpatient psychiatric care fell by 10.5% percent, or 990 beds, to 8,457 beds in the last decade. Most of the decline was at state-run psychiatric hospitals, which provide long-term care for people with severe mental illnesses, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the fall. And while it doesn’t apply to the five boroughs, 20 of the state’s 62 counties have no inpatient psychiatric beds at all.

And making it worse, the estimated prevalence of mental illness grew from 17.5% a decade ago to a bit more than 21% of the state’s population, according to a post-COVID federal survey.

Gov. Hochul and Mayor Adams, separately and jointly, are trying to remedy this situation underground and elsewhere. The state has its Safe Options Support (SOS) teams looking to help homeless folks in the subway, many of whom may have mental health issues. The city has its Intensive Mobile Treatment (IMT) Teams that fan out to find people in need. The state and city have combined forces for the Subway Co-Response Outreach Teams (SCOUT).

Whatever the alphabet soup acronyms, the goals are the same: bring people who need assistance in to get help, even if it requires bringing the person in involuntarily. Yes, everyone has rights, but society has rights as well and the laws of the state and the courts recognize that.

It shouldn’t have to wait until an unwell person is hurt or hurts someone, or there is a death, as happened with Neely or when a person in a demented fit shoves a stranger off a platform to be killed by a train. Jordan Neely might still be alive and having his illness under control instead of being remembered a year after his death.