Leaders say Chirlane McCray is ignoring Asian mental health crisis
Suicide is the leading cause of death of Asians in the city — but leaders of the community say they’ve been largely ignored by Chirlane McCray’s Thrive mental-health initiative.
“We feel like we’re in a room where we’re screaming and no one’s hearing us,” Joo Han, deputy director of the Asian American Federation, told The Post.
Han said she’s met twice with McCray since the mental-health program was launched in 2015 — but the first lady was a no-show at four subsequent sit-downs.
When she announced Thrive, McCray pledged to focus on “underserved communities, including immigrant communities.”
And Asian-Americans — who make up 15 percent of the city’s population — fall squarely in that camp.
Yet there are only three licensed mental-health clinics in the city geared toward Asians and they all have month-long waiting lists, Han said. None is funded by Thrive, she added.
Han believes the community suffers from the “model minority myth,” where the city’s 1.3 million Asians are perceived as successful when in fact they’re the poorest racial group in the Big Apple.
Jo Park of Korean Community Services of Metropolitan New York said Thrive doesn’t provide mental-health first-aid training in Korean and her small organization can’t afford to hire a translator.
Joy Luangphaxay, a director of behavioral-health services at the nonprofit Hamilton-Madison House in Manhattan, said Thrive has actually hurt her group.
“We’re in conflict with NYC Thrive because they have tried to take a lot of our clinicians,” she said.
Thrive has hired away three of her interns by offering $15,000 more than her nonprofit could pay.
“It puts a lot of burden on us,” Luangphaxay said. “We’ve been in the community for over 120 years and we’ve been providing great services.”
McCray, who is on vacation with the mayor in Florida, fired off several tweets Friday defending her pet project, which was initially budgeted at $850 million over four years.
A program spokeswoman said Friday that they “want to explore new ways to engage different communities, including the Asian community.”
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