About Breakdown

Breakdown, a project of  the NYCity News Service at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, marks the product of a four-month investigation into New York City’s various systems for dealing with the mentally ill.

Our team of six reporters traversed the city, examined hundreds of documents and interviewed scores of stakeholders, from the mentally ill and their families to lawyers and advocates to experts and city officials.

The Breakdown Team

Christine Brink (@ChristineBrink1) is a multimedia journalist currently working as reporter at TV 2 in Denmark. She is a master’s candidate at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism with a focus on International Reporting, and has reported at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, DR.

Noah Caldwell (@noahgcr) is a multimedia journalist based in New York. He’s currently a podcast fellow with the GroundTruth Project, and his work has been published in The Daily Beast, Scientific American, Roads & Kingdoms and more. Additionally, he has reported from Turkey, Scotland, Israel and the West Bank.

Mary Hanbury (@MaryHanburyNYC) is a journalist based in New York writing for Business Insider. She previously worked as a reporter in London and Hong Kong.

Anthony Izaguirre (@aizaguirre100) is a reporter currently covering the Alabama legislature for The Associated Press. He previously worked as a freelance general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.

Michael O’Brien (@michaelxobrien) is a journalist in New York City. Currently, he’s a correspondent for the GroundTruth Project.

Joanna Purpich (@JoannaPurpich) is a freelance multimedia reporter and student at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. She has worked with Oregon Public Broadcasting and NBC.

Faculty Advisors on the project include Andrew Lehren, Benjamin Lesser, Jere Hester and Christine McKenna.

If you want to reach the reporters on this project for comments, concerns or questions, email us at [email protected]