How New York cripples, but does not heal: the mental assistance system in the city destroys people's lives

I am Marshal Simon and I am Michel Goh. I am a victim of the system. The first time I visited New York, I was a promising young student. I left town a week later diagnosed with a psychiatric threat. The story of two people affected by the health system was told by New York Daily News.

In 2011, I attended Barnard College's month-long pre-college program, excited and hungry for the knowledge that this world-famous city has to offer. My eyes lit up at the sight of the cityscape. I was amazed by the countless people scurrying past shops. I remember sitting in a cab, curious about the way graffiti changed to brownstones as I drove from LaGuardia to Morningside Heights.

But by the end of the week, my head was spinning and I went to a clinic in Colombia. The visit turned from an innocent test of teenage stress to an outpouring of tragedy. The doctor said, "Wait here," and before I knew it, I was in a wheelchair. I had to sit on it. Then I was taken to the New York Presbyterian Child Psychiatric Ward. There I spent the night behind bars, looking at the skyscrapers and thinking that I had failed. I went there due to dizziness but left due to psychiatric risk.

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Barnard kicked me out of their program after they found out about my hospitalization. I was told to take my things and leave the premises immediately.

Michelle Guo

Eleven years later, the world went berserk when they heard the story of how Michelle Goh was pushed onto the subway tracks, ending her short life. Her supporters called it an act of hatred towards Asians, but everyone recognized it as a failure of the city's broken mental health system. Her killer, Marshal Simon, was a lonely mental patient with schizophrenia.

At 23, I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. I also had hallucinations. I sat for hours listening to the conversations I heard, the figures dancing on the walls. My body suffered from hours of impotence, I experienced a debilitating lack of motivation. I made an unusual choice for someone living with a psychotic disorder. Instead of suffering from anosognosia, which is unawareness of one's disorder and affects about 30% of people with schizophrenia, I thought that self-knowledge and knowledge were my best tools. I meditated. She underwent CBT, Internal Family Systems and Dialectical Behavior Therapy for her symptoms.

I became so aware precisely because I did not want to be considered a murderer. I didn't want to accidentally ruin my life in a fit of instability. I did not want to be called ignorant, lazy or irresponsible schizophrenic. After all, many people considered me like this during the year when I did not take drugs.

However, it is true that I am also different from Marshall. I am a woman. I have a white father who protected me in every clinical situation when I lost my temper. Basically, there was someone in charge of me that Simon didn't have. Because I also yelled at strangers. I yelled at the hospital staff for speaking to me in the third person. I protested when I was not allowed to sit anywhere but in front of the camera. I was disappointed by the lack of care.

Road to misfortune

But in many ways I am similar to Michelle Goh. I'm professional. I am a volunteer in my community. I have a degree in psychology. I am a half Vietnamese, half white woman who may not seem ethnic enough to be the trigger for a racial criminal impulse. However, a woman who qualifies as the target of an angry man in the right place at the right time. At the right time, shortly after he tells the doctor he has to go "push a woman under a train».

The intersectional ideology fails us in the sense that these boundaries are blurred. To the hospital staff, I'm Marshal Simon's cousin. I am a nuisance and a tragedy. For the public, I am associated with Michel Goh, a hero and a working-class man.

What should have been a formative journey for my youth has become a torturous road to misfortune. They will become my destiny as a mentally ill person - a destiny riddled with holes, gaps and dangers. If people like us are left to fend for themselves, without support, they will experience the same. When I got into Barnard, I didn't fail. The mental health system and college resources failed me. And the mental health system is failing people like Marshal Simon by refusing to take preventive measures to protect themselves. She brings people like Michelle Goh down.