Can hanging out with friends really fill the gaps in New York City’s mental health crisis? Seven decades of peer clubhouses operating in the Big Apple say yes, it can — and more.
Harlem welcomed a city-funded peer clubhouse on 138th Street from provider Phoenix House on July 28 in a ribbon-cutting ceremony. City Councilmember Yusef Salaam, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Assemblymember Jordan Wright helped with the honors. The site soft-launched on June 2 and membership currently is at around a dozen people.
“Phoenix House, I would like to say, is going to make sure that people grow through those things that they were going through just yesterday,” said Salaam. “They’ll be able to, on the other side of healing, be a valued member in society.”
The new Harlem Clubhouse provides free peer-led mental health support to adults ages 18 and older who are living with a serious mental illness. It will also connect participants to transitional workforce programs, GED prep, and other resources, according to program director Savannah Lampley. The new site can host up to around 300 members.
“There’s a demand for accessible mental health care, especially near Harlem Hospital and along the 125th Street corridor,” said Lampley. “There’s definitely a gap of services with just the influx of folks who are struggling since Covid, but even before that, [for] folks who have serious mental illness, who have issues with [a] substance use disorder, who are homeless or in need of community services.
“With these proposed cuts coming to Medicaid and different federal changes happening down the line, now more than ever, this is a great time for Harlem to be connected to service like a clubhouse.”
The peer clubhouse model boasts a seven-decade track record for reducing hospitalization among New Yorkers living with serious mental illness, all based on volition and consent, in a city where Rikers Island jails serve as the nation’s second-largest psychiatric facility. Clubhouses are free and completely voluntary, unlike many treatment programs, which often rely on court orders or require insurance at the door.
In practice, the model keeps people living with serious mental illness busy. Exactly what programming looks like typically depends on the participant’s needs. For example, Phoenix House offers GED prep and $1.25 hot meals prepared by the members themselves. Many decisions come from a member-wide vote. In the background, services stay available.
Peer clubhouses truly make their name from bringing people living with serious mental illness together and fostering a community where they can support one another in their personal battles and paths to recovery.
Community requires membership, so Phoenix House is busy setting up tables at resource fairs and block parties across Harlem in hopes of drawing new participants.
“We’re really able to meet people where they’re at, more so than a treatment program or a clinical program. The benefit of not being clinical is that we are not a billable service so we don’t require people to have insurance when they come in, which reduces the barriers to getting connected to a community like [Harlem],” said Lampley.
Mental healthcare’s secret weapon
Lampley calls the clubhouse model “the best-kept secret in healthcare.” The blueprint originates right here in New York, back in the 1940s with Fountain House: Several patients came together and developed the concept to address loneliness and the desire for community. Fountain House remains the largest peer clubhouse provider today and has a site in a different part of Harlem..
Phoenix House came up later, but has a similar origin. Six people who used drugs met in a detox program back in 1967 and moved into a Manhattan brownstone to tackle sobriety together. Today, the provider runs mental health services in Long Island, Brooklyn, and Queens. The new Harlem site serves as a true Manhattan homecoming for Phoenix House.
Mayor Eric Adams’s appointment of former Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Ashwin Vasan brought new light to the peer clubhouse model early in his administration. Vasan previously hailed from Fountain House and unfurled an ambitious expansion plan in 2023 for peer clubhouses (although request for proposal criteria drew criticism for cutting out smaller clubhouses).
“Having a space to feel supported and seen plays an invaluable role in wellbeing for our family members and neighbors with serious mental illness,” said a DOHMH spokesperson over email. “The Health Department has expanded our investment in clubhouses to connect even more New Yorkers with high quality services that do that and more, and look forward to working with Phoenix House to serve the Harlem community.”
Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign also championed the clubhouse model. His public safety plan would create more sites and bolster existing ones. The Democratic primary winner also promised to reverse Adams’s request for proposal barriers to help smaller providers attain city funding. In April, he pointed to peer clubhouses as an example when asked about the top funding priority for public safety.
“I think what’s critical is that we put money behind that which is already proven to be effective,” said Mamdani during a press conference at the time. “I’ll give you one example: peer clubhouses. In New York City, we have a number of these clubhouses, best typified by Fountain House. Fountain House provides services for New Yorkers with serious mental illness. We’ve seen their services mean up to a 45% reduction in the likelihood of that New Yorker going to an emergency room or hospital.
“The cost of services in an entire year of a Fountain House member is $4,000. It is about the cost of putting a New Yorker on Rikers Island for three days. For some reason, our city continues to spend $500,000 a year on incarcerating New Yorkers on Rikers Island.”
House tour
Phoenix House programming intends to become more than just busy work. “We don’t want to just sit a coloring page in front of people and say, ‘Here’s some colored pencils, enjoy,’” said Lampley. “We want to connect people to tasks that will give them a sense of purpose, sense of meaning, sense of mastery, and also help build their self confidence.”
She believes the Harlem site, which sits across from Abyssinian Baptist Church and is a short walk north from Harlem Hospital, can provide the proper amenities.
“It just feels like a very bright place when you come in,” said Lampley. “The vibes are really nice. And I think having access to so much natural light, plus the outer space, really helps the place feel like a center of wellness.”
A sprawling courtyard garden sets the stage for “Kickback Fridays,” while an ADA-compliant kitchen allows members to try their hand at viral TikTok recipes. Meanwhile, a work-in-progress computer lab helps build tech savvy — there are even plans to teach older members how to use their cellphones.
“You see the technology and then access to education and employment resources,” said Bragg. “Feeding people, helping their education, employment development, and then just being together, in community with one another — that makes a strong, healthy safe neighborhood, and that’s what we’re talking about over [at] the Manhattan [District Attorney’s Office].”
Clubhouses become clubhomes
During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, clubhouse member Erica Moore spoke about how the new Harlem site affected her. “When I first walked into [the] Phoenix House Harlem Clubhouse, I came with the heart to serve and support others,” she said. “What I didn’t expect was the mirror it would hold up to my own life, after receiving my own mental health diagnosis.”
While clubhouses cannot directly replace psychiatric treatment, their results can be downright extraordinary. Arvind Sooknanan, a member of Fountain House’s Bronx location who bounced from six different high schools and left two colleges after repeated hospitalizations, is an example.
The second-gen Indo-Guyanese New Yorker lives with Schizoaffective disorder — a mental health condition that overlaps with schizophrenic symptoms like hallucinations and delusions with those from mood disorders like depression.
“Clubhouses, I really believe, changed my life,” said Sooknanan. “It’s what allowed me to get back into society, it’s what has allowed for every other thing like therapy [and] medication, to work in a way that it didn’t for me before going to the clubhouse. I had been hospitalized over 20 times across the city, as well as in D.C. and Miami. I had tried every antipsychotic that was out there.
“New York City [has] the most psychiatrists, clinicians, and adult programs in the country. I felt like I tried them all in a weird way, and yet nothing was helping me. I was still really incredibly alone. I wasn’t able to get through a single college course, nor was I able to stick to taking my meds, and it all really changed when I walked into a clubhouse.”
Seven years passed since Sooknanan first stepped foot in Fountain House. He recounts just two hospitalizations since, “but the major difference about being hospitalized those two times was that I had somewhere to come back out to,” he said.
His clubhouse progression led to enrollment at Lehman College, where he met political science professor Jenifer Rajkumar and later managed her successful assembly campaign to become the first South Asian woman to join the New York state legislature. Sooknanan was just 21 years old at the time. He also played a hand in Rajkumar’s run for public advocate this year.
Sooknanan advises those considering membership at a Phoenix or Fountain House to “just let other people there help you figure out what you want to do every day.” He maintains that there’s no pressure to engage at all — just show up, when possible.
He also pointed to President Donald Trump’s recent order encouraging municipalities to involuntarily commit people civilly and recent narratives tying Monday’s mass shooting in Manhattan to mental illness as examples of where clubhouses can correct the record.
“With all the money that has been spent, and that continues to be spent, we owe it to people with serious mental illness to help them be reintegrated back into society,” said Sooknanan. “This gets often overlooked — that we’re people, too. We can have things to contribute.
“Under the right conditions, like a clubhouse, we can do that. It’s because of the clubhouse that I can prove to other people that I’m okay, that I have something to contribute, that I am more than my illness.”