By Madison Avenue TMS & Psychiatry - April 7, 2025

New York is a fast town — ”the only city in the world where you can get run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian,” as the journalist and author Russell Baker once famously said.

While there are many reasons to love the Big Apple, there’s also no denying that the city famous for its hustle culture, noise, high cost of living, and sheer mass of densely packed humanity can be a tough place to live for many residents. 

The city government acknowledged as much in releasing its first-ever report on the State of Mental Health of New Yorkers in 2024. It found a city still struggling to recover from the isolation, uncertainty and grieving of the COVID-19 pandemic, which worsened health and economic inequalities and left psychological scars on many young people, teenagers and various non-white ethnic groups.

“Mental health is one of the most pressing public health challenges of our time,” Dr. Ashwin Vasan, commissioner of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene writes in the report. “The grief and trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, on top of long-standing social and economic inequities, and an increasingly digitized and divided world where loneliness and isolation are on the rise, have created an urgency to address mental health for all New Yorkers.”

While the report makes a number of policy recommendations to help improve citywide mental health, we’ll leave those for you to read on your own. Here, we offer a list of resources and suggestions for New Yorkers who are struggling with mental health issues. 

Our list spans the gamut, ranging from the importance of preventive self-care for people who struggle with mental health issues to seeking help in the form of counseling.                          

Free and Low-Cost Mental Health Resources in NYC

While the benefits of exercise for one’s physical health are well established, it’s also hard to overstate the role it plays in fostering good mental health. Studies have shown that exercise is helpful in reducing depression and anxiety by burning off stress hormones and promoting the release of mood-boosting endorphins. 

That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to run out and buy an expensive gym membership or start pumping iron. Research shows that aerobic exercise, in particular — think running, bicycling or simple walking — is particularly beneficial for mental health.

Fortunately, New York is a great walking city, with no shortage of opportunities to clear out the mental clutter while getting in some steps. Here are some suggestions:

Visit a Park

Spending time in green spaces conveys similar stress-busting, mood-enhancing benefits as walking or riding a bike, and New York is blessed with some incredible urban parks. Two of the best-known are Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, both of which were designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. But there’s also Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, Flushing Meadows Park in Queens and countless other smaller green spaces. All are worthwhile places to escape from the grind of city life and do a little restorative forest bathing. 

Go to the Zoo

At 265 acres, the Bronx Zoo is billed as one of the largest urban zoos in the world, home to more than 6,000 animals. It’s managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages four zoos and an aquarium across four boroughs.

Botanical Gardens

New York City boasts two excellent botanical gardens: The New York Botanical Garden, in the Bronx, is the largest, at 200 acres, while the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is adjacent to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum.

Museum Mile

The creative arts have also been shown to bring mental health benefits, even as a patron. New York’s Museum Mile offers plenty of opportunity to view incredible art, highlighted by the Guggenheim and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Get Out On the Water

In the urban jungle, it’s easy to forget that Manhattan is an island and all of New York City is surrounded by water. The Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges both have dedicated pedestrian crossing paths, making for some stunning vistas of the city skyline from the middle of the East River. The city has also done a lot in recent decades to create linear park space along its various waterways — check out the Hudson River Greenway, Little Island or Brooklyn Bridge Park for good examples. If you want sandy beaches and the ocean, Coney Island or the Rockaways are reachable via subway. And don’t forget the Staten Island Ferry, which traverses New York Harbor and remains perhaps the city’s greatest free amenity.

Dedicated Mental Health Resources

• Mental Health Guides – The Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health offers an array of services, starting with a downloadable guide available in several different languages that can help connect residents. 
• NYC 988 – The city offers free and confidential crisis counseling and support for mental health or substance abuse 24 hours a day, seven days a week via phone, text message or online chat.
• NYC Health + Hospitals – The largest municipal health system in the nation offers resources for free or low-cost mental health and substance-use services, including the 24-hour 800-NYC-WELL hotline and NYC Care, an access program for uninsured and immigrant patients.
• National Association on Mental Illness – The organization, known informally as NAMI, offers resources including a hotline, links to local chapters and support groups, educational resources including podcasts and videos, and more.
• SAMHSA – The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, offers a tool to search for providers from anywhere in the U.S., national helplines, and information about treatment payment options, among other things.

Help from Madison Avenue TMS & Psychiatry

Madison Avenue TMS & Psychiatry offers compassionate physicians and staff who are experts in providing care for a wide variety of mental health conditions. We work hard to make our patients comfortable and encourage them to ask questions about their options or course of treatment.

If you want to take control of your mental health and reclaim your life, contact us to learn more about our compassionate care and innovative transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) therapy services.

Madison Avenue TMS & Psychiatry