How peer-led support can change mental health outcomes

Taina Laing became CEO of Baltic Street Wellness Solutions, a peer-run organization focused on mental wellness, in the summer of 2020. But, she has been with Baltic Street for nearly 23 years, starting in 2002 at the organization’s Baltic Bazaar, a thrift store on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. There, she assisted individuals with mental health diagnoses get back into the workforce through Baltic’s Assisted Competitive Employment program. 

Laing, who graduated from Stony Brook University with a Masters in Social Work, said she firmly believes that peer-led support has the ability to change mental health outcomes across the nation and hopes that through advocacy and leadership, the stigma surrounding mental health can be dismantled – calling herself a testament of resiliency. 

Baltic Street Wellness Solutions is the state's largest peer run organization. It provides comprehensive services in areas of housing, employment, training and education. The organization approaches individuals with a holistic person-centered support. Laing said she hopes that the work Baltic Street has done can be replicated as the fingerprint for mental health services. 

New York Nonprofit Media spoke with Laing about Baltic Street Wellness Solutions and the current mental health landscape of New York.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did Baltic Street Wellness Solutions get its start?

There were a lot of people that were unhappy with the way services were being provided inside of psychiatric hospitals. And what I mean by the people, I mean people that were the recipient of services. Sometimes the medical model is just not the answer, where it's like, oh, you have a diagnosis, let's get you fixed, and now you're cured. Now you could go back into the community. That's not always the best solution, right? Individuals were seeking real humanistic approaches to care. Like many times people get into the world of the medical space that they think that it's about curing the disease, but we're missing a piece of that. And that's the humanity piece. So people went and decided we need to advocate for real support. It doesn't look like the shape of a social worker or a psychiatrist, it looks like the shape of you and I can relate to a situation because we both lived through this. Whether it be by diagnoses, whether it be by living in a certain community that could be oppressive, whether it be by what landed me here in the hospital. And, what happened to me? What happened to us? 

Peer support is innovative. We noticed that individuals that work with other individuals will share the same lived experience that they were feeling and becoming active members of society. Now, all of a sudden, I'm just gonna give an example, Jamie went from being a person that was in long term psychiatric care. Now, Jamie is partnering with someone else who is now living in the community and saying, “Hey, I, too, was here. Look at me where I am now. I'm working. I have a wonderful community. I started a family. I'm living my life.” So it instills hope in individuals. So what peer support, ultimately was able to prove is that individuals can have healthy lives with psychiatric diagnoses, or dual diagnosis, either with substance use or misuse, as well. People do recover and can recover. So that's how Baltic street started.

Can you talk more about Baltic Street Wellness Solutions’ mission and how it has impacted the mental health community? 

So Baltic Street’s mission, I can give you the short version, is ‘for us by us’. Every single individual that works for the organization, is a person with a shared lived experience–either with mental health, or substance use or dual diagnosis of both. And the mission is that ‘nothing for us without us’. That is that we sit at the table, when policies or new programming is being instilled in the city we have a voice at the table. 

We truly believe in advocacy. Our mission is to ensure that every individual in New York City has a voice. We are the voice of the voiceless. We support every single person that walks through our doors wherever they are in their recovery. Our tagline is “All roads to recovery lead to Baltic”. Not all roads are linear, so recovery is not linear. Our mission is to ensure that all New Yorkers get good quality support and services in the peer world. And that's who we are. We are the largest peer run organization, community based organization in New York State. We have a little over 80 individuals that identify as recipients of service, mental health, or substance use services that are now working and thriving within New York City.

What are some of the organizations’ strategies to dismantle stigmas surrounding mental health?

Oh, my dear, I am that person. 

One of the things that we do to dismantle stigma is show up. I could talk to you from the “I” perspective. I am a woman of color who grew up during the crack era in the 80s and my community was falling apart. We all shared the same lived experience that we were losing our mother, our fathers, our uncles, our sisters, our brothers to the epidemic of crack cocaine in our neighborhood. 

What we didn't realize is that we were being traumatized. So a lot of us were classified as you're never going to make it, this is the only thing you have to live for. And it's unfortunate because there were no resources, we were just in a space where there was constant over policing. Our black and brown families were being ripped apart by the use of substances. There was literally no hope for us. And so when I sit there, and I look at myself, I say that I am a true testament of resiliency of my own lived experience and trauma. Every day that I show up at a news conference, I show up for the organization, that I can take my very lived experience and show the world that people can recover from traumatic childhood experiences and can flourish. It only takes one person to care. 

One person that cares could be a loved one, it could be a friend, it could be a co-worker. It could be anyone that is just willing to say, “are you okay, is everything all right?” So, every time we step out and we talk against policies that are oppressing people, policies that are going to systematically keep people from progressing, we show up. We show up and we stand for advocacy. That we are the voice of the voiceless.

How would you describe the mental health landscape of New York right now, especially after the tragic death of Win Rozario?

We have a lot of work to do when it comes down to education. People walk around with a lot of fear when it comes to mental health still, because of false narrative in the news space. 

We have so much work to do when it comes to quality access to services. I believe that no one should wait. No one should be waiting six months to see a therapist if there is a crisis.

It’s sad to say that even after COVID, that's something that we keep hearing more and more stories of. We have people that are waiting up to eight months just to get an appointment to get an assessment done, when the crisis is happening currently. 

We need to get more quality care where it is really person centered focused. If I have a broken bone, I'm not going to call a baker to come help me. So the police, over-policing of people that need access to mental health services, I think we just got a lot of work to do there. Sending police when a person is in crisis is not the answer.I'm going to always push that we should always send a peer advocate to support people when they're in crisis. People that know trauma informed care. We need a lot of education. We need a lot of anti-stigma campaigns around mental health. Sending the qualified individuals that are fit for emergency responses, I'm going to keep on talking about having peers be a part of the emergency, 988 number. Dispatching peers instead of dispatching police. Dispatching social workers, when crises are amongst us. Really reframing how we can support mental health in a humanistic sense, not in a punitive state. People are hurting, and people just need someone that really is there to care for them. 

What’s next for Baltic Street Wellness Solutions?

What's next for Baltic Street? I plan on standing firm on my name change. I told you originally that our name was Baltic Street AEH, advocacy, employment and housing. And in my transition, as a CEO, I renamed it Baltic Street Wellness Solutions. And that's what it is. It's tearing down the silos, tearing down the views that we are to dissect people in diagnoses or substance use. We are looking at all people through a holistic lens, wholly and fully. Come to me as you are, we will support you as you are. And our role for Baltic is that it's going to continue to grow. We're going to be hosting our second symposium this year, that's going to be focusing on loneliness. The title of the symposium is “unlocking the power of community, addressing loneliness.” 

It's going to be the first of its kind because there are no peer organizations that are really looking at this from this landscape and this point. We're gonna be the first to do it. We are the thought leaders surrounding how services are going to be delivered or rather should be delivered in a peer lens. And I'm excited about that. I'm excited that we're reaching, real grassroots level on the ground care. Supporting people where they are and whatever their road to recovery is. We will be a part of their journey and supporting folks that will ultimately lead them to what success is defined in them (their quality of life measures) So What's their quality of life? No one can measure. It's what they think to be successful. I'm so incredibly excited to see how Baltic Street Wellness Solutions maps out the blueprint or rather the fingerprint of mental health services for New York and the nation.