NYC NOW - December 1, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

In an historic move George Santos is ousted from Congress after 3 attempts. Plus, the Campaign For Healthy Minds released a study recommending Governor Kathy Hochul and the state invest almost $200-million dollars for kids' and teens' behavioral health services. WNYC’S Tiffany Hanssen spoke with their Director of Policy for Child and Adolescent Health, along with Mashrafi Anwar, a student at NYU and leader at the Youth and Caregiver Council about it. Finally, WNYC’s Precious Fondren caught up with legendary Yonkers rapper Styles P at his restaurant VeganHood to learn more about his business.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news and then around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jared Marcel. George Santos is no longer a member of Congress. In the historic move, the House voted to expel the Queens and Long Island Republican today by more than two-thirds of vote. This means Governor Hockel will set the date for a special election early next year. Republican consultant shaping face as a special election could be good for local Republicans looking to distance themselves from the spectacle.

It's going to be hard to reset from Santos and the stink of him. So I don't think there's going to be a complete reset, but I do think it will be a much more positive scenario for the Republicans, right? You don't have to deal with national issues as much. You don't have to deal with, you know, if it's Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. The county party leaders will pick candidates to run in the special election. Those names are likely to be announced in the coming days. After the break, we dive into a new study on children's mental health in New York.

York. That and more. Advocates in New York are warning that kids, teens, and families are in the middle of a mental health crisis. In 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and other organizations declare the state of emergency in adolescent mental health nationwide. In New York, staffing shortages and long wait lists for city and state services are exacerbating the crisis. WNYC's Tiffany Hansen spoke with Alice Buffkin, Director of Policy for Child and Adolescent Health at the Campaign for Healthy Minds and Healthy Kids, a Coalition of Mental Health Advocacy Groups. Her group released a study recommending Governor Kathy Hockel and this state invest almost $200 million for kids and teens behavioral health services.

Also joining is Mashrafi Anwar, a student at NYU and leader at the Youth and Caregiver Council. Ellis, this study, what did it look into specifically and what did you find? The study that Healthy Minds Healthy Kids conducted over the past several months really engaged providers from all over the state, from New York City, from upstate, from Buffalo, Albany, all corners of New York to really look at the crisis of children's mental health and specifically outpatient mental health services for young people and families. We did this so that we could really collect a really rigorous understanding of the key challenges, driving the challenges that families are facing and accessing mental health. services for their children. And what we know is one of the primary reasons we have so many young people on wait lists for months, for six months, for a year, for longer, is we simply don't have the workforce of professionals available to meet the needs of children in the state. And so we know a central challenge and reason we have this inability to meet the needs is because rates are

simply inadequate to pay for these services and the complexity of care that children in New York need. We reached out to the state's Department of Mental Health and Governor Hockel, office on this. Her office didn't respond, but the mental health department mentioned the governor's $1 billion plan to strengthen mental health care that she announced earlier this year. It includes more money for school-based clinics, community resources, among other things. So I'm wondering what your sense of that plan is. The challenge with a lot of the investments that we've seen at the state level is one, they're primarily focused on the adult population. And two, they are not necessarily addressing the issues of workforce. Many of these really important and valuable investments

that you've mentioned, we believe are fantastic. We have great investments in school-based mental health clinics in programs like healthy steps. But the challenge is we have a deeply underfunded system that has been underfunded for decades. And we need to adjust the systematic challenges within our state's children's mental health system, which includes looking at things like rates. It's not enough for us to invest in specific programs as important as those individual programs are. Okay, Ms. Rafi, you meet regularly with officials and the community to talk about how New York can improve access to behavioral Health Services for children and teens.

Just last year, you and others went on a listening tour where government officials took recommendations from mostly young people on how to improve mental health support. So I'm wondering what kind of recommendations you suggested. Some recommendations that I suggested definitely had to do with a lot more of just dealing with the structural and more of the social determinants behind mental health. Oftentimes, I think, like especially just thinking about a culture of blame that gets put on to youth and parents. They're often ties towards, you know, fixing up social media or, you know, capturing more of the after effects, but they're never talking about the actual issues that lead

into certain things. So instead of, let's say, demonizing a lot of parents, a lot of children for taking certain action or taking courses, you have to explain a little bit of why, like, what leads into the decisions that they make, right? So a lot of what I advocated for when speaking, which is to get into the structural changes, like, why is it that kids turn to social media? Why is it that kids mental health are about? Like, what exactly is the driving factor that goes into that? And I think speaking about those structural issues are really important. And on top of that, I also advocated for just really highlighting a lot of children's and just

youth's voices in general. I feel like oftentimes what happens is that we're kind of guided a little bit more towards researchers and experts. And a lot of the times these researchers and experts are people who just kind of study youth mental health, right? But they aren't people who necessarily live through it. Alice, when we hear about kids' mental health and the crisis, we hear blame put a lot on the social media that Shrafi is talking about. We hear blame put on the pandemic.

So what do you think? Can we put all the blame there? We absolutely can't put all the blame on social media and the pandemic. And at the same time, we have to acknowledge, you know, the role that they do play. We know that well before the pandemic, young people were not able to access the services they need. We knew that before the pandemic, suicide was the second leading cause of death. for children age 15 to 19. We knew that we were having parents on weightless, unable to access the care they needed. So it's really important that when we think about how do we address these

issues, we had to focus on the systemic issues that were there before the pandemic and were exacerbated by them. Ms. Rafi, I'm curious how you feel the state's approach to adolescent mental health is. I think there is a lot more of work to be done. Like, it is appreciative that we are seeing like a want to give an effort, right? And it's nice to have that want, to see them want to do so. It also depends on how they do and if they do it the right way. So I think what we've seen from a lot of the things that there has been a lot of money, but where has it been allocated towards? Has it been allocated based on just research, based on statistics,

or has it been allocated behind conversations, listening into the youth and hearing what they have to say and organizations just like Healthy Minds, Healthy Kids, and what we have to say or do? Alice, you mentioned how critical it is for teens, kids, their parents to all feel supported. if you could pull out your magic wand, what would you like to see the state do? So I think a starting point is a deep investment in rate reform, which the study that we conducted really gets us to. We need to be addressing the reality that children have complex needs. When you're working with a child and providing them with mental health supports or substance use supports, you're not just working with them. You're working with their family. You're working with

their teachers. You're working with different systems like the child welfare, the youth justice system. you're working with the education system. Children are complex. They have complex needs. And in order to adequately support them with high quality services, we need to compensate providers for this important work they're doing. And currently we're not doing that. And we really see that in the vast number of vacancies we see and the massive challenges with recruitment and retention that we see, the turnover. We really need a wholesale commitment to investing in not only the mental health system, but also proactively identifying where the needs are. Alice and Mishrafi, thanks so much for joining us today. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's WNYC's Tiffany Hansen,

in conversation with Alice Buffkin, Director of Policy and Adelicit Health at the Campaign for Healthy Minds and Healthy Kids, and Moshrafi Anwar, NYU student and leader at the Youth and Caregiver Council. What do rappers do when they want to expand their empires? Some get into the liquor business, using their names to sell cognac or whiskey. But Yonkers' native Stiles Pee is taking an unconventional approach. He's getting into the wellness business. WNYC's precious fondron caught up with him at the vegan restaurant, Veganhood in Harlem to learn more.

After more than 25 years of rapping, four albums with his group The Lox and 15 solo projects, Stiles P is retiring from his solo career. The rapper, best known for his 2002 hit, I Get High, says it's time. I need to make room on the schedule and make room on my brain to be able to do it. He kicked off an 8th City retirement tour earlier this week with the show in New York City. He's focused now on helping communities with high poverty rates get access to healthier foods. To him, that means vegan food.

What we try to do is bring awareness to the people in the hood of how they could get something plant-based and something good. He started a nonprofit called Pharmacare's, which holds a monthly dinner series in Yonkers called plant-based community dine-in night. There, families can get a free vegan meal. I'm working on taking care of my people. Doing the best we can. Health is the most important thing that we have. That's what drives me and wakes me up every day. Stiles first discovered veganism back in 2013.

I was a vegetarian 10 years before that, and I just went on a cleanse and never went back. Plant-based is the lifestyle I love to live. Janine Smalls Gay is the co-owner of veganhood, who collaborates with Stiles P. She says she loves helping people realize that eating vegan can be fun. You get the same great taste.

You get the same seasons that you're custom to. You're going to get that taste of that Caribbean flatbush. You're going to get that crunch with that fried chicken. You're going to get them flavors, but just plant-based easy on a digestive system. You know, that shrimp and that tartar, so you're going to feel like you in City Island, but it's just veganized.

For Stiles P, eating right is everything. Health is wealth, so we take it like that, and we make sure to push the envelope forward and inform people to just practice balance in their lifestyle and eat as healthy as possible. The next plant-based community dine-night is happening on December 15th in Yonkers. That's WNYC reporter, Precious Fondren. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Quick shout out to our production team and includes Sean Boutich, Amber Bruce, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, The Oranum Kravitz, Jennifer Munson, Wayne Showmeister, and Gina Vosti.

With help from the entire WNYC Newsroom, our show art was designed by the folks at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrato. I'm Jared Marcel. Have a great weekend.