“We try to figure out what’s going on in someone’s life,” said Jonathan Timal, half of a team that was 30 minutes into an eight-hour shift in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
He and Jared Grant, his teammate from the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services of Brooklyn, have a straightforward assignment: Walk up to people in the park — anyone, not just people who show signs of stress or instability — and ask a conversation-starter question, something like “How are you feeling today?”
“They have a lot of stuff bottled up, and nobody to talk to,” Grant said. “It helps just letting people express themselves.”
Timal and Grant are the faces of a pilot project, now in its fourth week, called Open Air Connections. It was billed as seeking to remove the stigma around mental health care through a community outreach effort. The two men were trained to assess the concerns of the people they approach — and how serious those concerns are — and make referrals to agencies that can provide help.
“Most people are doing life and just need a little extra,” said Shola Thompson, an official from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene who devised the program.
But Morgan Monaco, the president of the Prospect Park Alliance, the nonprofit group that runs the park, added: “You don’t know until you ask.”
“This typically isn’t done in parks,” Monaco said as Timal and Grant talked with two men near the skating rink in the park. “This represents a new way of thinking about how parkland contributes to public health outcomes.”
It is a way of thinking that gained popularity in the pandemic, when parks became a refuge for many New Yorkers. Parks provided a break from the tensions of being confined to their apartments when bars and restaurants were essentially forbidden zones and theaters and museums were closed.
For many, the pandemic also brought the stress of sudden, unplanned hardship — lost jobs and financial insecurity. It’s no wonder that the health department found that nearly 25 percent of New Yorkers questioned in an informal survey had experienced anxiety and that nearly 18 percent had experienced depression. Nearly half of those who said they felt they needed mental health support did not know where to go to get it.
Enter the teams from Open Air Connections. But Timal and Grant said they had heard more about the everyday worries of city life than about serious mental health issues.
There was a woman from Brazil who said she was concerned about the unfairness of the criminal justice systems here and there. Later, a woman who said she was a college professor talked about crime in the subways. “She was thinking she should get a car because she doesn’t feel safe,” Grant said.
They said they had talked with a man in his late 20s who lived near the park and was upset that his landlord wanted to double the rent, to $3,000. They called someone from Neighborhood Housing Services and gave the man a referral to a specialist on landlord-tenant disputes and rent rules.
The health commissioner, Dr. Jay Varma, said in an interview that the program reflected “the idea that mental health is not something we can deliver through conventional settings, clinical settings in particular. It’s something we need to bring to people.”
That was why the health department was “leaning into” the low-key model behind the pilot project, he said.
He said it was important that the teams worked not for the health department but for community organizations — and do not wear white coats that scream “mental health professionals.”
“It’s not someone in a D.O.H. hoodie,” Varma said, using a short version of initials for his agency, “or a mayoral initiative with a brand on it. This is a community organization that has been in the community, that has a track record of serving the community and is staffed by people who live in the community.”
Varma said each team was expected to engage in roughly 750 “light-touch encounters” lasting five to 15 minutes and 500 “medium-to-high-touch encounters” lasting as long as a half-hour.
Timal and Grant said their encounters tended to be at the long end of that range. Sometimes there is no stopping the conversation, and they have learned to let it go where the person drives it. “We could talk for hours,” Grant said.
Weather
It will be a mostly cloudy day with temperatures reaching the mid-40s and winds of up to 15 m.p.h. At night, there will be a chance of light rain, with temperatures dropping to the upper 30s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Thursday (Holy Thursday).
The latest New York news
Trump’s trial date is definite. His bond is lower.
METROPOLITAN diary
Fresh loaves of rye
Dear Diary:
My sister was getting married in a small town in Maine. Both she and the groom were transplants from Brooklyn.
My sister asked that I bring two large, fresh loaves of rye bread as a special treat for the wedding. The day before, I stopped at Lords Bakery at Nostrand and Flatbush Avenues after finishing my classes at Brooklyn College.
I told the woman at the counter that I was buying the bread to bring to my sister’s wedding in Maine the next day.
I asked whether I should get the loaves sliced. The woman said the bread might stay fresher on the long trip if it was unsliced.
It turned out that the groom had asked his brother to bring up two large, fresh loaves of rye. The brother also went to Lords and asked the same woman for two large rye breads, explaining that he would be bringing them to a wedding in Maine the next day.
“Are you pulling my leg?” the woman said. “A lady was in here earlier asking for two rye breads for her sister’s wedding in Maine tomorrow. Am I on ‘Candid Camera’?”
The groom’s brother displayed complete ignorance.
“She got hers unsliced,” the woman said, referring to me. “Maybe you should get yours sliced?”
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
