A Brooklyn behavioral health nurse published an op-ed about delivering psychiatric care across Brooklyn: delivering medication to unhoused patients at Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick, traveling from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge in a single afternoon, and spending years building enough trust with a man who cycled in and out of Rikers that he eventually became a devoted father who no longer needed her team’s support.

Marie Tisi, an East New York native and Behavioral Health Nurse at VNS Health, wrote the piece for BK Reader on July 1. She works with the Brooklyn Assertive Community Treatment team, which focuses on adults living with severe mental illness who have repeatedly cycled through emergency rooms and psychiatric hospitals and who may also be managing substance use disorders or other physical health conditions.

Tisi writes that the work takes nurses into walkups, basement apartments, shelters, and bus stops across Brooklyn. She describes an afternoon moving between a client in Greenpoint and another in Bay Ridge during rush hour, with stops at Maria Hernandez Park to deliver medication to a patient without stable housing.