Key Project Activities / Progress Points

So far, we’ve initiated the first steps in conducting research about the state of mental health in New York City. Because our topic covers a very wide breadth of information, we first gathered a strong list of useful online databases, archives, and other informational resources pertaining to: the history of mental health in New York City (as well as New York State and the nation in general – many federal and state laws have most certainly influenced how New York City has dealt with and handled mental health issues), Thrive NYC, Parachute NYC, other modern city government initiatives, major community organizations working with mentally ill citizens, mental health statistics, etc. We’re still in the process of consolidating all of this information, but we generally plan to utilize these data sources to supplement our historical narrative and our overall understanding of what mental health is like in NYC today and the issues that people suffering from mental disorders are facing in terms of accessibility to mental health resources and services.

A clarification about our overall research topic: ACCESS and COMPREHENSIVE CARE are the keywords for our research project. These components are two of the most major issues concerning mental health today. More specifically, accessibility to mental health services is becoming increasingly limited in New York City, and mentally ill patients often have inadequate information regarding what services are available to them. Many, especially in poor, minority communities, also have difficulties affording any of these services. In addition to a lack of access to affordable mental healthcare services, these services are often not comprehensive and may not effectively help the mentally ill. The problem lies with a lack of communication and coordination among social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Psychologists typically engage in talk therapy, psychoanalysis, and other non-prescriptive services, while psychiatrists provide the psychopharmacological services (i.e. drugs and medications) that psychologists do not have the authority to prescribe. Social workers work primarily to help the mentally ill deal with societal and life difficulties and ease their way back into society during or post-treatment. All of these services are essential for a mentally ill patient; unlike a typical disease that can be easily cured without any residual effects, mental illnesses often stigmatize many patients because of societal standards and ideals. It is thus important not only to properly treat the mentally ill but also to help them function normally in society. However, there currently is no standard or system that allows for the coordination of social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists to provide a comprehensive, personalized treatment to each mentally ill patient. As a result, many patients constantly switch off among different professionals, but do not get the individualized and thorough attention they need to get better and move beyond their illnesses. Our goal is thus to examine why there is a lack of access and comprehensive care for mentally ill patients and perhaps propose possible solutions to begin addressing these two essential issues. We begin by looking at Thrive NYC and other government initiatives and observing whether they properly address this lack of accessibility and comprehensive care.

Hence, we’ve been working on our historical narrative and highlighting major movements and policies that have governed the state of mental health from the 20th century to beyond: Many of the city’s earliest mental health policy reforms were initiated by the early and mid-1900’s mental hygiene movement, in which people began exposing mental health institutions as miserable, neglected, and controlling of the mentally ill. As a result of increased mobility against the improper maintenance of, and service provided by such institutions, the city, state, and even federal government responded with policies that funded better mental health facility construction as well as increased access to mental health treatments, trained professionals, and other services and resources. One important result of these policies was an increasing movement towards community-based mental health programs (CBMH’s) that still play an extremely important role in today’s mental health situation. Just like social workers, these programs provide mental health services, social and life counseling, personal and professional development workshops, and other community activities that can help patients more easily maneuver their lives in society. Often, they provide the emotional support that psychologists and psychiatrists, who focus only on treatment of the disease on a scientific level, don’t. Fountain House, Families Together, Urban Justice Center Mental Health Project, and other community contacts we have been trying to get in touch with, offer examples of such CBMH’s, and we thus find it very important to learn more about these programs and how they can be better incorporated in mental health policy and government initiatives.

Overall, we have: 1) clarified and further explained in detail what our research topic is, 2) gathered a list of useful online databases and sources for our information collection, 3) consolidated a part of this information into our historical narrative, to further our own understanding of how mental health in NYC changed and evolved to present-day

Challenges Faced / Tasks Remaining / Group Dynamics

The biggest problem we have right now is keeping in touch with our community contacts. We have emailed a large number of potential community contacts, and we only got one successful contact – Families Together (though we are still waiting on this contact’s reply to some of the questions we have for our research). We also want to find one or two other contacts to supplement our community knowledge, though we are having trouble getting in touch with other such organizations and groups. In addition to maintaining increased communication with community contacts, we need to begin speaking with individuals who suffer from mental illness and gathering qualitative data from both professionals and patients about Thrive NYC’s effectiveness, and the problems revolving lack of access and comprehensive care. We also need to continue expanding our research to better understand what services Thrive NYC is providing and work on scheduling visits to mental health organizations to see how mental health services are provided firsthand. Once we have done more research and actually interacted more with community organizations and individuals, we will begin working on our white paper and public engagement product (likely a flyer, unless we come up with something more creative).

In terms of group dynamics, we’ve had a couple of meetings so far to go over our basic plan and conduct further research. It’s often hard to work around our different schedules outside of class, though we do our best to accommodate for each other. In general, the people who have some free time together work on the project as a group, and whoever may have missed out looks over the work that was done and adds to it with their own perspectives and ideas. We communicate extensively on Facebook and through Google Docs, and we update each other constantly about new community contacts, posts, etc. Overall, I think we’re doing fine as a group, though we may need to pick up the pace once our community contacts and ideas for outside community engagement are finalized.