NEW YORK - During her first press conference as city Health Commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot talked about something completely unexpected - her father's suicide when she was nine years old.

"No one in my family, or at my school talked about it," Barbot said.

That experience is helping to shape Barbot's mission today. She says addressing the mental as well as physical health of the city's children is high on her agenda.

"It was very hard. And you know I would say that I was blessed. Even though we didn't talk about those things. I had the support of aunts, uncles, cousins to keep me distracted if you will," Barbot said.

But Barbot says that when she was a practicing pediatrician, she found that many of her young patients didn't have that needed support.

As former Health Commissioner Mary Bassett's first deputy, Barbot played a key role in bringing more mental health consultants into city schools to teach children yoga and meditation, offering therapy - tools to help them deal with life's traumas.

"So that as these children mature and become adults they don't then have those coping mechanisms turn into vulnerabilities that put them at risk for addiction put them at risk for serious mental health issues or keep them from progressing," Barbot said.

The program is part of first Lady Chirlane McCray's Thrive NYC program, which is now its own office under City Hall.

Barbot says the health department will continue to work closely with Thrive, to improve how children being treated in school can be better connected to care outside of it.

Her heightened focus on children extends to their mothers. Barbot is also directing the department to increase efforts to curb maternal deaths by focusing in on how stress may play a role in a mother and her baby's health.

"The additional components that will sort of characterize my tenure is really looking at, the role that mental health plays in these issues not only in terms of broad health outcomes but really issues related to health inequities," Barbot said.