“Coercive interventions are costly, traumatic, and ineffective. Community-rooted care, grounded in trust and lived experience, is how we build a system that prevents crisis instead of punishing it.”
Last month, I was in Harlem—the very community I serve as a peer specialist—when I found myself spiraling after days of little sleep and emotional overload, sparked by recent work with a client in crisis. My thoughts were racing. I was emotionally raw. I was not a danger to myself or anyone else. What I needed was rest and compassion.
Instead, I was confronted and surrounded by four NYPD officers, at my workplace, which felt like a punishment for feeling too much.
Despite explaining my state, and clearly asking for the city’s B-HEARD team—New York’s alternative crisis response program that sends trained mental health professionals, not police—I was handcuffed and forcibly taken to the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program (CPEP) at Lincoln Hospital…