Forging a collaborative path forward for New York’s mental health

Healthcare leaders convened Wednesday to discuss challenges and paths forward on addressing  mental health at Mother Cabrini Health Foundation’s Mental Health Summit: A Collaborative Path for Well-Being at Sony Hall in Times Square, and in collaboration with City & State. Attendees listened to a series of panels and speakers addressing the key issues that shape their work. 

Channon Lucas, executive vice president of external engagement at Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, set the tone for the summit, stressing that the gathering was not merely “about feeling for others,” with words and no action, but about engaging in “radical empathy” for New Yorkers and working towards solutions on mental health care in the state. This includes New Yorkers all across the state, not just in its major urban areas, she emphasized. 

The first panel, moderated by Jihoon Kim, president and chief executive at In Unity Alliance, featured Dr. Michelle Morse, commissioner at the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Jody Rudin, president and chief executive at the Institute for Community Living, and Eva Wong, executive director at the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health. 

The panel centered on the vast mental health crisis across New York City and state, exploring the intersectionality of mental health, housing instability, and homelessness, and how to mitigate the proliferation of care disparities. Dr. Morse led the way, pointing out key challenges that have plagued the mental health industry for years, particularly what she calls an “implementation gap.” 

“Almost one in two New Yorkers report needing support when it comes to their mental health needs,” she said. In response to this, Dr. Morse highlighted major goals the city has set to combat the surge, including a reduction in deaths by suicide by 2030 and an increase in New Yorkers’ life expectancy to 83 years by the same year. “We [at the city level] are doing our best to respond.”

Morse also made note to call out systemic structures and generational discrimination that have not only kept New Yorkers from knowing of and receiving preventative care, but that continue to create stigma and shame for receiving services. 

Wong pointed to a lack of investment, diversity, and workers’ agency, empowerment, and upward mobility as a major cause of the industry’s various disparities. She urged attendees to prioritize prevention and educate patients, particularly youth with whom Wong and the mayor’s office has worked with extensively, on developing language to better describe what they are experiencing. 

In the face of federal cuts to healthcare access, Rudin and her fellow panelists chose optimism and working to serve New Yorkers, despite any challenges. “We should not be in this position,” she stressed, but what the industry does have is “the ability to plan,” citing the roughly two years between the upcoming midterms and the next presidential election (I think that’s what she was referencing…)

The second panel shined a light on faith leaders and, in turn, the ethos of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation in their critical role in providing faith-grounded hope, offering a moral avenue for those dealing with mental or substance-based challenges, as places of worship are often the first places where people struggling seek help. 

The panel, moderated by Daniel Frascella, chief programs and grants officer at Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, featured Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, Rev. Gilford T. Monrose, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships, and Caura N. Richardson, director at the Office of Faith and Nonprofit Development Services. Cardinal Dolan put a spotlight on the doctrine of the “dignity of a human person,” reminding the audience that all people of all backgrounds are afforded dignity as birthright. 

“Dignity does not depend on things we do, achieve, earn, or own,” he told attendees. “It doesn’t depend on a passport or green card, a Wall Street portfolio or bank account, the color of our skin, ethnic background, or sexual preference. It is a given.”

In response to a question about resources faith leaders need to better respond to challenges around mental health or substance abuse disorder-related issues, Dolan said, “We give something that cannot be seen in a budget or cannot be seen under a microscope. We try to give hope.” 

Monrose spoke about his community work in East Flatbush and the role the church has played in combating local gun violence. Working largely with mothers, especially those that have lost children to gun violence, the city and local churches were able to support the community through a number of services, including providing faith leaders that aligned religiously and ethnically to families if they chose. 

Additionally, noting how houses of worship have long been accessible meeting places for individuals going through mental health challenges, Monrose stressed the importance of resources for faith leaders themselves, including knowledge of government which he has championed in his work.

Richardson brought a state government approach, praising Gov. Kathy Hochul’s investments into mental health and work that the state has done to get a hyper-local sense of how to mitigate the crisis. She emphasized building partnership bridges, acknowledging how “people are turning to faith-based places for ‘hope,’” something non-faith-based organizations don’t always lead with, noting how people in need seek out these places because “they can hear the songs, the hymns, the sermons,” and “they don’t know where else to go.”

The third panel featured moderator Dawn M. Pinnock, president and chief executive at the Center for Urban Community Services, Pat Aussem, vice president of consumer clinical content development at the Partnership to End Addiction, Dr. Frank Cerny, executive director at the Rural Outreach Center, Maggie G. Mortali, chief executive at NAMI-NYC and Carrie Wilkins, co-president and chief executive at the Foundation for Change. 

The panel focused on community-based organizations that are, in addition to places of worship, some of the first points of contact for vulnerable people and entities that claw for sufficient funding and resources to serve a needing population. 

Panelists discussed the importance of comprehensive community care for those with mental health challenges, all agreeing that families, educators, and others in reach of the person in need should feel more empowered in mitigating risk. Aussem summarized this as “helping the helpers.” 

Additionally, cultural norms around dealing with people experiencing mental health issues, such as distancing oneself and allowing people to “bottom out,” essentially fixing themselves, should be corrected towards a more supportive, community-oriented approach. 

Sharing her own personal testimony with navigating ways to care for her son as he battled substance abuse and mental health struggles, she detailed her road towards Partnership to End Addiction and what the organization tries to accomplish. “We really want to support people and families and give them hope and practical tools to use to address the intersection of mental health and substance abuse disorder,” she said. “They don’t happen in isolation and our solutions can’t either.”

Cerny and Wilkens provided perspective on the disparity in not only services, but access to them in rural areas, coupled with heightened social stigma in communities where privacy becomes more challenging due to their close-knit nature. Dissemination and publicity of resources outside of major cities is also a point of concern. 

Cerny spoke passionately about the obstacles that people in rural communities have no choice but to face in order to reach the most basic of services, calling their treatment “demeaning.”

He and the Rural Outreach Center conducted an experiment on the lack of access with a rural woman his organization worked with who needed services that were significantly far from her home, answering the question “What would it take for her to get these services?”

“The bus that she could catch went through her little village at six o’clock in the morning. Three kids, keep that in mind,” Cerny explained. “She had to get a baby sitter. She had to take a bus into Buffalo, and then to get to the services she needed, she had to take two more buses, [only to be told] she didn’t qualify [for those services] because she still had a job. She had to reverse [her trip], quit her job, and find another way to do that whole thing again.”

“It’s not easy being in a rural area,” he added. “It’s not their fault.”

Following lunch was a fireside chat with Dr. Ann Marie T. Sullivan, commissioner at the New York State Office of Mental Health with City & State’s publisher, Tom Allon, discussing her department’s progress on meeting the mental health needs of New Yorkers throughout the state. 

And a final panel featured Neill Coleman, founder and principal at Mission Magnified Consulting as moderator, Leora Jontef of NYC Health + Hospitals, Catherine Trapani, assistant vice president of public policy at Volunteers of America-Greater New York, Harold Pincus, co-director of Columbia University’s Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, and Kelly Lyndgaard, founder of Unshattered. 

Jontef and Trapani both discussed housing as part of their remarks, Jontef asserting that housing is “is fundamental to a [successful] health trajectory” while Trapani, highlighting a major gift made to Volunteers of America, stressed the importance of donors trusting organizations to disseminate funds as they see fit with evidence-backed guidance, as was in the case of that donation that went towards building housing for underserved New Yorkers. Pincus similarly echoed the sentiment of data-backed action, urging attendees to not allow people to “fall through the cracks.” 

Trapani also advocated for philanthropists to not fear donating to transformational change, not merely resource-specific channels. 

Lyndgaard’s word for the day was “durablility.” Formerly an executive in the tech industry, she founded Unshattered, initially a simple fundraiser that turned into a fully-fledged organization, employing women in need and providing resources to empower them as they navigate houselessness, substance abuse, and the like. She likes to ask the question, “What is the durability of the work we’re doing,” seeking to go beyond the standard practice of helping a person once and sending them off into the otherwise unknown. 

The event also featured several short videos of patient and leader testimonies. 

Monsignor Gregory Mustaciuolo, chief executive of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation closed the event by thanking community leaders, attendees, government officials, and Mother Cabrini staff. “Addresing mental health is not about facts or statistics or concepts, it’s about human beings. You [all] are engaged in sacred work.” 

He closed with two key words for attendees to remember: "Persevere and persist,” hoping that one day, the room could be empty and an event like this wouldn’t need to exist.