Exclusive | Broken system led to states premature release of psych patient accused of stabbing tourist inside NYC Macys bathroom

New York’s broken mental health system pressures doctors to release severely psychotic patients — and likely played a direct role in the horrific attack on a tourist and her baby this week in Macy’s Herald Square, insiders and other critics told The Post Saturday.The suspect — an apparently deranged woman who was allowed to leave a Manhattan psychiatric facility without supervision — traveled alone to the famed department store, bought a kitchen knife and allegedly stabbed an unsuspecting mother as she changed her infant in a bathroom, authorities said.Kerri Aherne insisted to The Post that “voices” in her head ordered her to “kill.”“Somebody determined that this woman wasn’t a danger to herself or others – this is the whole problem!” said a doctor who works in New York-based mental hospitals.Facilities are incentivized to release patients, the source said.“The state has to pay out of their pocket to house them.It costs a lot of money… If they discharge them, it shows that they’re doing a great job.”“The administration is telling us we gotta get people out.

There’s a psychiatrist who is an administrator who walks around yelling, ‘You’re not letting enough people out.’ They call her the mob boss,” claimed the source, without being specific.Aherne, 43, had been in the state-run Manhattan Psychiatric Center for a year before the incident and had just been released to transitional housing, she said.The victim, 38, had been holiday shopping at Macy’s with her husband and children and was repeatedly hacked in the back, shoulder, and arm with the knife.The hospital source said patients in transitional housing like Aherne are still supervised — but not very well.“They’re pushing patients out … but they’ll go to transitional housing, which is also on our campus,” said the source.“The transitional housing is across from the hospital.That’s the facility where they had a broken door for two years.

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