“Breaking Point: New York’s Mental Health Crisis” is a powerful broadcast series about the intersection of poverty, mental health, and the criminal justice system by Cindy Rodriguez, of New York City’s public radio station WNYC. Vera is pleased to complement the broadcasts with a blog series that features the voices of experts from a range of fields as they examine how the nexus of poverty, mental health, and the criminal justice system affects nearly every aspect of New York City life. The series identifies gaps in these systems and identifies opportunities for research and reform.
All Posts
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Cindy Rodriguez
Series: Breaking Point
Breaking Point
My beat at WNYC is covering poverty. And I’ve been doing it for roughly a decade. At this point, I’ve probably spoken to hundreds of people, many of whom were either in the middle of a crisis or just getting over one. Whether it was a single mother of four b...
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Ayesha Delany-Brumsey
Series: Breaking Point
Public defenders can open the door to health services
The data clearly show that people with mental health issues are overrepresented in our criminal justice system. Men and women in jail have rates of serious mental illness three and six times higher, respectively, than men and women in the community. Furthermor...
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Chris Weiss
Series: Breaking Point
The role of research in filling system gaps
WNYC’s “Breaking Point” series highlights shortcomings in New York City’s economic, mental health, and criminal justice systems and the ways that current programs and structures are failing the people they are designed to serve. But there are substantial effor...
Series: Breaking Point
Embracing a public health approach to justice reform
My adolescence and young adulthood were largely shaped by negative forces: community disinvestment, mass incarceration, a failed War on Drugs, and its accompanying neglect of public health. The punishing circumstances of my youth were only matched by the harsh...
Series: Breaking Point
An interdisciplinary approach to keeping families together
As highlighted in WNYC’s Breaking Point series, the combination of poverty with serious mental health issues is deeply damaging to many families. In our work representing indigent parents and other caregivers in child protective proceedings in Manhattan and Qu...
Series: Breaking Point
Laying the groundwork for a more inclusive mental health system
WNYC’s “Breaking Point” series paints a vivid picture of a city where far too many people are struggling with mental illness on their own, and in the shadows. I recently met a woman whose experience illustrates the peril many New Yorkers face—and also the prom...
Series: Breaking Point
Responding to the lasting impact of violence
When poverty, mental health, and criminal justice intersect, violence often plays a key role. And while not every mental health issue is rooted in traumatic experience, violence and its associated impacts have a profound effect on the well-being of those harme...
Series: Breaking Point
Replace fear with science for effective NYC justice reform
New York City’s extraordinary drop in crime—best evidenced by murders plummeting from 2,245 in 1990 to 332 last year and jail incarceration being reduced by nearly half since 1991—is certainly something to be proud of, yet we still face challenges in effective...
Series: Breaking Point
A holistic approach to helping young people achieve
Every day at Good Shepherd Services (GSS), we see how precariously many of the city’s most vulnerable and marginalized children and families balance the effects of toxic stress, complex trauma, mental illness and poverty. We know—from our experience in our chi...
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Margaret diZerega
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Erin Burns-Maine
Series: Breaking Point
A place to call home
Programs for young students in elementary schools and for teens in the foster care system who struggle with emerging mental health issues or trauma—as described in WNYC’s "Breaking Point: New York’s Mental Health Crisis" series—are important preventatives that...
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David Cloud
Series: Breaking Point
New blog series with WNYC explores intersection of mental health, poverty, and the justice system in NYC
The behavioral healthcare system in the U.S. fails to meet the needs of too many people who need it most. As states have emptied and closed down their psychiatric hospitals without creating community-based mental health services to support those in need, our j...
Blog Series
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Dispatches from T.R.U.E. -
Dispatches from W.O.R.T.H. -
Dispatches from Germany -
Addressing the Overuse of Segregation in U.S. Prisons and Jails -
Beyond Innocence -
Gender and Justice in America -
It Takes a Village -
Justice in Katrina's Wake -
My Brother's Keeper -
Police Perspectives: Building Community Trust -
Unlocking Potential: Perspectives on Education in Prison -
Two Societies: The Haunting Relevance of the Kerner Commission’s Report