Brooklyn’s Mental Health: More Problems, Fewer Solutions
Brooklyn has the highest rate of psychiatric hospitalizations in the city, more risk factors, and fewer mental healthcare providers.
One could go for weeks on the hunt for a mental healthcare provider in Brownsville, Brooklyn and possibly lose their mind before reaching a therapist or counselor — if a reporter did, imagine a patient.
It comes as no surprise that in a 2016 Community Care survey in Brownsville and East New York, one in four Brownsville and East New York respondents said that the lack of services is a major barrier to access to mental healthcare.
Though low in supply, mental health providers are in high demand in Brownsville, where the psychiatric hospitalization rate reached 1,897 per 100,000 adults in 2018. This number is by far the highest in Brooklyn, which itself has the highest psychiatric hospitalization rate city-wide.
Shale Maulana, director of the Brooklyn Neighborhood Health Bureau in Brownsville thinks this high rate can be partly attributed to the lack in adequate mental healthcare services that cater to non-emergency cases.
In fact, Brooklyn as a whole has significantly less mental healthcare facilities than in Manhattan does.
To add to the problem, several factors increase the risk of mental illnesses in Brownsville residents.
A recent review of public health studies found that police encounters negatively affects the mental health of Black Americans.
The researchers found a statistically significant association between police encounters and negative mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, psychological distress, PTSD and suicidality.
These findings seem to be applicable to Brownsville, and Brooklyn in general. Arrest rates per capita are higher in Brooklyn than the rest of the city.
In the 2016 community survey, police misconduct was cited as a key challenge to mental health. Health director Shale Maulana is not surprised.
“Imagine what it’s like to live in a neighborhood where you hear gunshots every day, where you see someone getting arrested every day. On top of that, you have economic problems, crime, rent burden. Of course, the residents will experience more mental health problems,” said Maulana.
These problems that may result from police encounters are exacerbated by the over-representation of the Black community in the population of arrested individuals. In Brooklyn, 6 out of 10 arrested individuals are black. This number is not proportional to population demographics. It is double the ratio of Black people to the overall population of Brooklyn, which is 3 to 10.
As a response to the discontent with the situation, the New York City authorities introduced the Behavioral Health Task Force action plan that aims to train police officers to engage people in respectful, non-stigmatizing interactions and de-escalate crisis situations.
In parallel, the NYC Department of Health is giving Mental Health First Aid training session throughout the city. The latest session took place last Saturday at the Gregory Jackson Center in Brownsville.
Public health professional, Melissa McLeod, thinks the solution resides at both the policy and practice levels and starts with information.
She recommends the collection of data through community health surveys. Respondents would report the nature and quality of their interaction with the police. In parallel, hospitals and clinics would collect data pertaining to instances of hospitalization that were related to police encounters.
Making the problem a reportable health condition is the first step to understand and mend the relationship between the police and the community.
