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.
Tisi describes a patient who came to her just after his release from Rikers Island. Barely in his 30s, he had accumulated years of repeated arrests that Tisi writes were tied to untreated mental illness. She writes that he was accustomed to people seeing only his record. Her team worked with him through medication appointments, therapy, and support groups. Over time, she writes, he removed a gang tattoo, rebuilt relationships with friends and family, and became a devoted father. He eventually no longer needed the VNS Health team.
“Saying goodbye was not sad or bittersweet,” she wrote. “It was a reminder that truly being there for someone can change lives.”
Tisi writes that progress in this work does not always look like full treatment adherence. A client who is not taking their medication but who keeps weekly appointments and keeps talking, she argues, is still making progress, and those conversations reveal that person’s path to healing.
Tisi writes that her nursing career is tied to her identity as an East New York native. She writes that one of her first home care patients turned out to have a grandson in preschool with her own son, and that they attended the same church. VNS Health, where Tisi works, is a nonprofit that provides home and community-based health care across New York.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily image
