All posts by Tony Chu

4/13 Project Update

Updates - Mental Health

Key Project Activities:
Progress Made:
Community Contacts – Following up on Alexander’s project update from last week, we had Sam interviewing Dr. Mike Lamb, Libby meeting with Aashna, and Alex reaching out to Robert Melara.
Sam’s interview with Dr. Lamb went well, but not much information was provided as he wasn’t too informed about Thrive NYC. Although Dr. Lamb wasn’t too promising as a community contact, Libby’s meeting with Aashna was helpful. Aashna provided a huge list of clinics and community organizations for us. Along with that, she also gave her thoughts about Thrive NYC and expanded about her own project, Gleam. With the information provided by Aashna, we then decided to look into digital therapy. As for reaching out to Dr. Melara, there hasn’t been much of a response from him. The same can be said for Dr. Fietzer (clinician at Mount Sinai Hospital that Alex reached out to before).

White Paper – We started brainstorming for ideas on how condense our topic and see what exactly about Thrive NYC we should focus on. After bouncing ideas back and forth on Monday (4/11) we decided that we can assess how effective Thrive NYC is, compare it to established mental health programs, and then we can suggest what improvements Thrive NYC can make. On Wednesday (4/13), when it came time to structure the white paper, such as making a claim and supporting it, we were back to square one. We didn’t really have a solid claim because a simple assessment of a program holds no grounds in an argument. By the end of the day we decided that our argument could be “Thrive NYC is a promising program, but there are short falls as compared to other initiatives. Certain improvements can be made by _____.” This claim is structured so that we keep the same approach about Thrive NYC, but it also takes an argumentative stance. As for the blank provided, we are still researching and waiting on community contacts before we fill the blank in.

Research – In regards to research, we have looked into NICE and digital therapy. NICE is the National Institute for Health and Care for the UK and can be utilized as an established program that we can compare Thrive NYC to. Digital therapy was looked into as it can be an option on how to improve Thrive NYC.

What we plan to do:       
Community Contacts / Research – For the week (or weeks) to come, we await responses from our current contacts such as Dr. Melara and Dr. Fietzer. Along with that, we plan on reaching out to more people too. Kashaf has her friend who sought counseling. We plan on contacting her and asking on the availability of care, how has counseling helped, and if she has any thoughts on Thrive NYC. Sam also received a response from NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and will either speak to or email with them with our questions (refer to Alex’s post. Activities in Progress). As a group we also have signed up for Adult Mental Health First Aid training on Monday, April 25th. This event is sponsored by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. This eight hour course will allow us to see and experience what organizations such as the DOHMH is doing for mental health. This course will allow us to extend our reach with contacts as we can go and speak with the instructors or organizers.

White Paper – Our claim and any support to our claim is still not yet solidified. We are waiting on the input from community contacts before setting it in stone. In the meantime, we will do what we can and create a general outline for our claim and its arguments. We also plan on compiling the necessary history that is relevant to our claim. Note that we may have to tweak parts or chunks of our white paper based off the responses that we acquire from our community contacts.

Challenges Encountered:
Community Contacts – As stated earlier in “Progress Made,” getting responses from contacts such as Dr. Melara and Dr. Fietzer poses a challenge. Nevertheless, we do have resources (such as NAMI, the Adult Mental Health First Aid training, Aashana) to utilize as community contacts. We will continue to branch out to other groups from the list that Aashana provided while hoping to hear from Dr. Melara and Dr. Fietzer.

White Paper / Research – Before our group decided on our current claim for our white paper, we were brainstorming on what other approaches we could take on Thrive NYC. One of the suggestions was “We should invest more into Thrive NYC because ____.” This raised questions on the budget of Thrive NYC, like where is the money coming from and how is it being distributed. After doing a quick search online and a skim of the white paper for Thrive NYC, we realized that there is no definite answer to how money is being distributed. This fact practically nullified any claim our group could make whenever financials are involved. In the end, we decided that our current claim was the better way to go.

Tasks Remaining:
Now that we have a general claim. Our remaining tasks can be summarized as:
Compile research that relates to our claim –> Solidify our claim –> Create general outline of white paper –> Write the white paper
Of course, reaching out to more community contacts and getting responses from our current community contacts is also on our agenda.

Group Dynamics:
All in all our group is working well together. We have met up to brainstorm ideas about which direction this project to go. Any updates from our community contacts, questions, and concerns are all thrown into the group chat on Facebook. As for any documents, such as the white paper, we have started it in Google Docs where all the members can freely edit and view the documents. As for the distribution of labor, everyone has and will continue to do their part.

Summarizing:
We have gotten responses from previous contacts, but our project seems to still be lacking a strong community contact. Despite that fact, we have done the necessary research to keep the project moving. Since we have established our claim for our white paper, we can now move onto looking for research, reasons, and evidence to support it. From there we can start compiling and writing our white paper.

Clarifying Key Concepts: Mental Health

Clarifying Key Concepts

Through “Five Faces of Oppression,” I. M, Young elaborates on the five fundamental aspects of oppression. Following a Marxist approach of class structure, she explains that exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence fuel oppression. Of course she does state that these five “faces” are objective and only act as factors that support the idea that a group is oppressed. An example for this would be when Young states that the working-class people are exploited and powerless and that old people and disabled people are oppressed through marginalization and cultural imperialism.

Applying this to the group looking into mental health, we have to look at how those with declining mental health are oppressed (assuming that they are). Utilizing Young’s passage as a reference, one can say that those with issues of mental health go through cultural imperialism which in turn results to being marginalized and powerless.
The main cause of oppression would be cultural imperialism. As defined in the text, cultural imperialism is when a certain culture is established as the norm. In regards to mental health, it wasn’t until recently that mental health issues such as depression was even brought up as a problem. The whole stigma around it was that it either didn’t exist or that it wasn’t important. The standard before was that everyone was mentally stable. With the old norm being set in place, it caused many to be marginalized and powerless since the problem wasn’t seen as a problem in the first place.
Therefore under Young’s five “faces” of oppression, those with mental health disorders can be determined as oppressed. The next question is, “How can this be changed?” That is what Thrive NYC is for. As for how effective Thrive NYC will be, only time will tell.

Discussion Question: Will there ever be a point where oppression will cease to exist?

Community Defined: Proved Through Experience

Clarifying Key Concepts

Although the words neighborhood and community are used so openly, Harold DeRienzo clearly defines the two words in “Community Organizing for Power and Democracy: Lessons Learned from a Life in the Trenches.” DeRienzo states that the definition of a neighborhood is more stripped down and individualized. Each house is its own entity that has their own income outside the area. The only thing keeping the neighborhood as a group seems to be more geographical than anything. A community on the other hand, as Drienzo states, is interrelated and interdependent with power. A community shares common issues, problems and troubles, relies on each other economically, and have an established force to accomplish their common goals. Although these definitions do hit the mark for a community, one can think that it doesn’t fully encompass how a community actually works in the real world.

By looking through an experience I’ve had with a community, I can see that DeRienzo’s definition for a community rings true. A year ago, I attended a community meeting for Community District 9. This meeting was only one of their weekly meetings that usually focus on one big issue. The issue for that meeting was education. The beginning of the meeting covered an array of topics and issues that the attendees had, from the use of public space,  to the needs of the elderly. As the meeting went on, the main problem of education was introduced by a representative from the Board of Education for the district. From there information was passed down onto the community and solutions were being suggested left and right. The night ended with important dates for deadlines and protests.

Despite this instance only providing a small glimpse into how a community works, it supports DeRienzo’s three part definition. Commonality: The community came together to address any issues any individuals had along with addressing their decline in ELA and Math scores. Interdependence: It wasn’t that prominent in the meeting, but, structurally, the community does rely on each other. Collective Capacity: Whatever  general issues an attendee in the meeting had, once it was stated, it was addressed and acted as if the problem was a problem of the community itself.
Thus, through my experience it seems as if DeRienzo’s definition of a community holds true.

Discussion: Despite the fact that my experience supports DeRienzo’s definition of a community, can all communities really be defined by DeRienzo’s deifntion?

Surviving a Plague

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How To Survive a Plague, a documentary directed by David France, provided an informative medium to display the passionate fight against AIDS. By utilizing interviews, past footage, and the in depth stories of Peter Staley and Bob Rafsky, the struggles that ACT UP and TAG were depicted perfectly.

One of the most fascinating things that this documentary touched upon was the issue of drugs being available to the people. The first of many problems caused by the availability of drugs was when AZT was approved. Although AZT wasn’t a cure, it was treatment, which looked promising. Other than the fact that it costed $10,000 a year.

Having such a high price on one of the only treatments for AIDS, at the time, caused much dispute. Of course people weren’t happy and wanted a more affordable alternative. It was obvious. The thing is, the F.D.A. didn’t release anything else because there wasn’t enough data on other treatments. More drugs, D.D.I. and D.D.C. was then allowed by the F.D.A. under the the pressure of ACT UP.

A few years later down the line, a study shows that AZT and the other two drugs were practically useless. In the documentary, Staley explained in an interview that these drugs wasted the money of taxpayers. It was also assumed that ACT UP’s goals were short-sighted.

Playing devil’s advocate, this whole situation raises the question: was it premature to release drugs just because a community needed it? Some can agree that the F.D.A. released AZT on their own, but others can think that it was to please the community. AZT may have needed more testing and more time to provide definitive results. The same could be said for the other drugs too. Then again,  an argument can be made that the drugs were needed in the movement against AIDS.

A balance might be found if the F.D.A continued conducting trials without releasing the drug, but allowed people, who were terminally ill, to take the trail drug at their own risk.

Discussion Question: Is the process of getting a drug on the shelf really too long? Or is it just necessary?

The Quick and “Painless” Death.

A Plague on Houses

Chapters two and three from, A Plague on Houses, written by Wallace D. and Wallace R., provides the history and reasoning behind the problem with fires that New York City had in the late 1900s. Chapter two begins by explaining the ideas behind benign neglect and planned shrinkage . The chapter also elaborates how those two ideas fueled the the amount of fires that occurred in New York City. Chapter three goes onto explaining how the fires affected New York City in regards to its populations, communities, and its outcomes.

Chapter two, with its ideas of benign neglect and planned shrinkage, brings up an age old argument that involves life and death: If a patient is terminally ill, would you pull the plug or let the patient die on his/her own?

Acting on the fact that a neighborhood, in its whole, is a living entity, benign neglect and planned shrinkage can be defined as:
Benign neglect – allowing the neighborhood to die out on its own while still providing life support.
Planned shrinkage – pulling the plug on a dying neighborhood.

Roger Starr’s planned shrinkage embodies the previous stated definition. Starr felt that if a neighborhood was going to die, it might as well die quickly and painlessly. The plan was when the neighborhood dies, a new thriving neighborhood can be born. This makes logical sense, except for the fact that there isn’t a painless way of ending a neighborhood. Pulling the plug isn’t ever painless. It might actually be more painful. In this case, it was definitely more painful seeing how  there was the constant spread of fires, abandonment of neighborhoods, deaths, and especially the negative impact planned shrinkage had on the people of New York City.

Discussion question: What would be the most painless way to have a neighborhood die out? When does planned shrinkage seem like a good idea?

Macro v.s. Micro

“The Patron Saint” and the Git’r Done Man”

The excerpts,”Jacob vs. Moses, The Patron Saint, and the Git’r Done Man,” from Scott Larson’s Building like Moses with Jacobs in Mind provided an interesting read. Larson explains and displays how Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs clashed in their ideas for urban planning. Robert Moses is described as the “single minded” man who wanted to shape New York with respect to the region and the world. He wanted to make sure that New York was rid of its infected neighborhoods and then rebuilt in glory on a global scale. Jane Jacobs on the other hand was the opposite. She was analytical and wanted to strengthen neighborhoods through her four principles of urban design: varied building ages, short blocks, density of population, and mixed land use.

While looking at the two sides of urban planning, the differences between them are clear as day and night.

Moses focused on the Macro of New York. Moses wanted New York to be extravagant and a force to be reckoned with. With his power in official city positions, bridges, parks, highways, and much more public spaces were built to basically put New York City on the map of the world. He didn’t seem to care too much for the Micro of New York as long as he felt that the future of New York looked strong.

Jacobs on the other hand looked upon the Micro of New York. She wanted to keep the neighborhoods and strengthen its core: the people. Jacobs aimed to allow people to make their own decisions, to protect their areas. She wanted to keep the essence of a neighborhood.

Were their methods effective?
Looking at the present, in the Macro sense, Moses’ idea about modern planning on public spaces have made New York a known name all around the world. At the same time, Jacob’s ideas of her style of urban planning still remains with its diverse neighborhoods and buildings throughout the city. By continuing to take parts from Moses’ and parts from Jacobs, then New York can continue to expand in both a Macro and Micro way.

Discussion Question: Is it possible to fulfill the needs of New York City in both a Macro and Micro sense considering the fact that gentrification might be affecting the Micro of New York City?