With the city and state working to improve mental health services some advocates say providing benefits to care for ailing parents or a newborn should be a part of the puzzle. NY1's Erin Billups filed the following report.

The U.S. lags behind other developed nations in requiring employers to offer paid family leave but advocates are hoping to at least expand benefits in New York.

"We have a temporary disability insurance system that's outmoded, but it’s easy to fix it, to provide paid family leave and to raise the benefits to more realistic levels," says Nancy Rankin, Vice President of Policy Research & Advocacy at Community Service Society of New York.

The Community Service Society is one of the groups lobbying Albany for paid family leave, with a new approach -- emphasizing the health benefits.

"There’s good evidence that the longer the time people have off, the less likely they are to have serious depression. Serious depression sets the family off in the wrong direction, makes it more likely the child itself will have difficulties later in life," says Dr. Howard Minkoff, Obstetrics & Gynecology Chairman at Maimonides Medical Center.

Dr. Minkoff says less time off means mothers are less likely to breastfeed during those crucial early months.

"There are a litany of advantages to breastfeeding for the child, as well as for the mother. Less ovarian cancer, less diabetes. All of these things are facilitated by having some time apart," he adds.

This year the Democrat-led Assembly passed a bill to create a paid family leave benefit. It would require an employee deduction of less than a dollar a week, and double the temporary disability insurance to 12 weeks for women and men.

The bill died in the Republican-controlled Senate, but advocates hope that changes next year.

"There's been a real explosion in interest in this, that we hear about it in the presidential debates, we hear about it through these announcements in generous policies in the tech industry in particular and what New Yorkers don’t realize is we could have this tomorrow," says Rankin.

But the business community says it's actually not that simple, arguing they would be forced to contribute more to temporary disability insurance.

In a statement, the Business Council of New York State said, "This would be yet another state government policy barrier contributing to our state's uncompetitive business position."

Other concerns are that the benefit would kick in just four weeks after an employee is hired.