Building Trust and Wellness: Our Unique Approach to Mental Health Care
OnPoint NYC offers a wide array of mental health services, including barrier-free counseling, individual therapy, psychiatric care, crisis intervention, support groups, and more. Unlike a traditional mental health provider, however, our services are uniquely adapted to the needs of our community members – meaning that treatment can often look very different than what one would expect.
We sat down with Samantha Corso, Associate Director of Mental Health, who shared insight on these services and how they create trust, provide support, and promote wellness for those in our community.
Here’s a few ways mental health care looks different at OnPoint NYC:
Support is provided holistically and in conjunction with other services.
“Participants can come in and ask for mental health broadly,” Samantha says. In this way, they can access counseling, support groups, or a psychiatric nurse practitioner to get treatment. “But here, we also come to them.”
“Our whole motto is meeting people where they’re at – but we’re also meeting them when they need it in the moment. Our participants are used to being provided therapy in a really structured way – you get connected with a therapist and you go to your appointment. But here, we’re available in a bunch of different contexts.”
Staff work closely with other programs to ensure that immediate needs (which often impact mental health) are met.
“I’ll get folks who are seemingly having a panic attack, and I have a toolbox of how to treat anxiety, but what’s also contributing to that panic is the fact that they don’t know where they’re going to sleep. They haven’t slept, they haven’t eaten, they haven’t had water, they haven’t been medicated,” says Samantha. “A lot of therapy starts out with me being like, ‘Hey, do you need a snack? Can I get you something to drink? Can I get you an Ensure?’”
Once these needs are resolved, participants often are more receptive and can better engage in therapeutic work. As OnPoint NYC is “a one stop shop,” Samantha can also connect and accompany participants to OnPoint NYC’s clinic, case management, or holistics teams so they can work to stabilize all aspects of their lives.
Treatment has a degree of informality and flexibility often unheard of in therapeutic care.
OnPoint NYC therapists do not work within the health insurance system, so traditional hallmarks of mental health care – such as lengthy intake sessions, regularly scheduled 45-minute appointments, and sobriety prerequisites – are not required to get support. For many of our participants, such restrictions pose insurmountable barriers and may bring up past trauma – so the ability to set the terms and course of their treatment leads to greater compliance and better outcomes.
“This is a place where they can show up as they are and receive treatment, Samantha says, “They don’t have to look or behave a certain way to get through the door.”
Therapists also reach participants that do not directly seek mental health support – staff often spend time in our Overdose Prevention Centers, Drop-In Centers, and on the street to connect with participants in what Samantha calls “light-touch interactions” – quick conversations, crisis interventions, and connecting them to services.
“We’re moving throughout the space and being present and providing for people who are open to talking,” Samantha says. “I walk around with cigarettes, narcan, and candy. So if I see that someone’s kind of getting tense, they’re tensing their muscles, they’re sweating, they’re starting to breathe a little heavier, I’ll be like, “Hey man, like you want a cigarette? Let’s go for a walk.”
“We end up doing therapy on the fly,” she says. “Not everyone has the vocabulary or realize they want therapy. We get a lot of folks who have been hospitalized, or reported to ACS or parole by therapeutic providers in the past. Or they don’t have a support system or sense of stability, so opening up can be very difficult and scary. A lot of what we do is building trust.”
If participants choose to seek further therapeutic support, they can receive services without a formalized treatment plan or set appointment schedule, and can choose the environment they wish to meet. “I would say [only] half of my sessions happen in an office,” says Samantha. Some participants find the clinical setting too institutional or claustrophobic, so therapy may happen in OnPoint NYC’s garden, in line at the OPC, or elsewhere. She has ran into participants at the nearby bodega, resulting in impromptu therapy sessions. “We can really tailor it to your needs in an instant,” she says.
Mental health support groups are flexible and participant-driven.
Given many of our participants’ negative past experiences and associations with structured group therapy in rehab facilities or mandated situations, OnPoint NYC strives for broad, flexible groups that meet each participant where they are.
“Group therapy in a traditional sense has the same group of people every day and there’s a rigorous intake process – that doesn’t work for a lot of our participants,” Samantha shares. So groups are operated on a drop-in basis, with a mix of regulars and sporadic visitors.
Attendees are welcome to use these spaces as they see fit. “We have an artistic expression group where people will be given a prompt. They can choose to talk through group or focus on the art project. Sometimes people will come to group and fall asleep. That’s okay. Your body’s telling you that you need to regroup. We can make that space for you.”
Many of these groups were created directly in response to participant requests – including a grief group and a sexual health group. As Samantha explains, “We want the groups to feel like they belong to the participants – we’re there to facilitate and respond, but everybody is driving the ship.”
Some are facilitated by therapists, others center peer voices. “Not everybody wants to join a group where a therapist is there, they want to speak with people that have lived experience and know what they’re going through. So you get to choose your own adventure, and both are valuable,” says Samantha.
The team hosts creative events that center community, fun, and joy - and while these may not feel like therapy, they have concrete wellness benefits.
“Seeing a therapist provides a space to talk about pain, but [at OnPoint NYC] it’s also a place where you can have fun and just take your mind off of everyday stressors,” says Samantha. Regular events include karaoke (with a corresponding chillax group for those that may be overstimulated), art activities, and embroidery.
“For a lot of participants, it’s the idle time that gets them. When they feel like they don’t have purpose or they don’t have anything that they enjoy that isn’t getting medicated, they just end up repeating the cycle,” says Samantha. Through these informal events, participants enjoy a supportive community, connect with others, and have the opportunity to practice self-expression and learn healthy routines.
OnPoint NYC’s flexible and judgment-free approach to mental health care works. Samantha has seen lots of examples of success as a result of our barrier-free, flexible, and harm-reduction informed model.
“I had a client once who was having drug-induced psychosis and believed that things had been implanted in him…we found out that he was using sharp objects to dig them out. So he’s hurting himself and risking inflection. He was working with me and the nurse, and she recommended that he use a plastic card to scrape them out instead of a razor – and that’s harm reduction.”
In a traditional treatment setting, he would probably have been given a label of psychosis, been turned away, and felt invalidated and unseen. “Here, I can get to know him and then talk about safety, we have the time and flexibility to build that trust.” Through this approach, our community members are more likely to show long-term engagement and improve their well-being.
Samantha also sees how the groups and community-building aspects of OnPoint NYC’s services make a tangible difference in the lives of its participants.
“They go from being very isolated and not knowing who to trust, to having a sense of community and friendship. And you see how that impacts people’s health – to not feel alone, and to be supported.”
It’s moments like this when Samantha really connects to her work. She came to OnPoint NYC after providing substance use treatment in a traditional setting, and while she loved the work, she did not love the rigidity and one-size-fits-all structure. It’s extremely meaningful for her to have the opportunity to meet people where they are and assist them wherever they are on their journey.
“I think that people deserve support throughout every step of the [recovery] process. Drug use doesn’t have to be all or nothing, small wins can be big wins, and some of those little wins are in safer use. I found this work because I like treating people without an agenda,” Samantha says.
Interested in learning more about the various types of mental health support at OnPoint NYC? Check out the posts below:
Where Wellness Grows: Inside OnPoint NYC’s Garden Sanctuary
The True Impact of OnPoint NYC’s Holistic Services
How OnPoint NYC Provides Barrier-Free Mental Health Care for our Community
