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NYC children seeking therapy to deal with anxiety of being exposed to vagrants: ‘Constant state of panic’

September 24, 2022 | | Print Article

School children in New York City are being traumatized by their daily exposure to homeless vagrants and drug addicts and are seeking therapy for help to cope with the anxiety of witnessing things on the streets that children should never have to see.

“My daughter has seen everything from fornication, masturbation, defecation, urination, you name it, she has seen it. … consistently and constantly. She is in this constant state of panic,” Hell’s Kitchen mother Katie Hamill told the New York Post.

According to Hamill, her 7-year-old daughter thinks no one is helping “the dying people” — addicts in various stages of a drugged-out state, like the one who got high at a 42nd Street playground and began ripping his hair out — and it upsets her deeply.

“My kid asks me to move,” Hamill said. “We have considered leaving the city. It’s hard.”

Hamill’s daughter, she says, is one of “a lot” of kids who are now in therapy.

When the pandemic began, New York City sent thousands of homeless people to Hell’s Kitchen hotels, leading to a spike in brutal, high-profile crimes, according to The Post. Making matters worse is the state’s bail “reform” measures, which allow dangerous accused criminals back out on the streets. And with drug paraphernalia now decriminalized, NYPD does little to stop junkies from shooting up in public spaces.

The result is more crime, more fear, and a sharp decline in the quality of life New Yorkers once had.

“Major crimes in all three precincts that cover Hell’s Kitchen are up this year, with the surge nearing 60 percent in Midtown North and South,” The Post reports. “Robberies are up 57% in Midtown South and 20% in Midtown North. There have been 10 murders so far this year in the three precincts, double the number during the same period in 2021.”

And while much is being made of the homeless crisis on social media and in the local news, few are addressing the effects of navigating through the maze of filthy encampments, prostitutes, panhandlers, and brain-fried junkies on the city’s most vulnerable residents: the children.

Cindy Sanders and her daughter live in Chelsea. Her daughter, who attends NYC’s Professional Performing Arts High School, was able to see a therapist for her stress through a program offered by the school.

“I think everything after COVID has added to the amount of stress on them,” Sanders said. “So it’s very unclear what exactly is causing the stress and anxiety.”

“Since they just got back from COVID, the crime rate was higher, and the number of homeless on the streets was higher as well,” she explained. “All of it, I think, in combination created a lot of anxiety.”

To protect her daughters from the unpredictable, often aggressive vagrants, Sanders drives her daughters to school, but still the children are exposed to chaos.

“A woman … started yelling at us in the car,” Sanders said. “My daughter was nervous about getting out of the car and crossing the street to go to school.”

“It’s terrible especially like this street, in this vicinity, it’s gotten so freaking bad,” mom Christine Capolupo said. “It’s like in broad daylight you see them shooting up and crazy stuff. It wasn’t like that. It was pretty decent, the neighborhood. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Capolupo and her husband dialed the police just days earlier, after spotting a vagrant snoozing on a Ramon Aponte Playground bench.

Another, anonymous mom and lifelong resident of Hell’s Kitchen says her two daughters are also in therapy and are afraid to go outside.

“My kid is like lunging and attached to me like she wants me to carry her and she is 8 years old. It’s not a way for anybody to live, especially kids,” she said.

The horror stories go on and on.

“Therapists say the toxic combination of pandemic stress and daily doses of depravity is creating a veritable Generation Angst in the Big Apple,” The Post states.

Retired NYPD detective sergeant Joseph Giacalone says this is the result of a city that has stopped enforcing quality-of-life concerns.

“Yes, the little things do matter, because the impact on other people — whether it’s crime, or in this case psychological — these things can be avoided,” he said. “There’s always a cost to something, whether it’s a cost in crime or a cost in therapy. This is what many of the reformers don’t understand.”

 

Melissa Fine
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