New Orleans’ Mental-Health System Weakened
September 5, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
People with serious mental illnesses in the New Orleans area are not receiving adequate care due to Hurricane Katrina’s decimation of the city’s health-care system, reports the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.
The closure of Charity Hospital, which anchored the mental health system for the poor, is at the center of this lack of care.
A region that had about 462 psychiatric hospital beds before the storm now has fewer than 200, a recent survey found. And psychiatrists are hard to find as well – only 42 of 208 in four parishes were practicing in the region, according to a July survey by the state Department of Health and Hospitals.
“We had a large mentally ill population before Katrina. There wasn’t much for them before, and now there is nothing,” Cecile Tebo, coordinator of the New Orleans Police Department’s crisis unit, told the paper.
