It is a busy Friday afternoon. Staff members check in guests at the front desk. Other employees lead visitors on tours of the upstairs bedrooms and field calls from people considering future stays.
Aromas of garlic and roasted chicken seep out of the kitchen.
Community Access is not a bed-and-breakfast, although it feels like one when you walk through its unmarked door off Second Avenue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Also known as Parachute NYC, this quiet, seven-bedroom facility is one of four publicly funded mental health centers in the city for people on the verge of a mental health crisis.
These respite centers have no medical staff, no medications, no locks or curfews and no mandatory activities. They are secure, welcoming places where people go to escape pressure in their lives and talk to trained “peer professionals” who are recovering from mental illness themselves.
[For more of this story, written by Christine Vestal, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/...ce21e223d_story.html]
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