Mental health care in New Orleans remains the biggest hole in the safety net

Mental health care in New Orleans "remains the biggest hole in a safety net that was decimated" by Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals in July found that only 42 of 208 psychiatrists in the four-parish New Orleans area were currently practicing and that the number of psychiatric hospital beds in the region since the hurricane has fallen from 462 to 190.

Meanwhile, the rate of serious mental illness in New Orleans has doubled since the hurricane, according to a study published last month in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

The Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center has decided not to reopen Charity Hospital, which before being damaged in the hurricane handled most psychiatric services for low-income people, and instead plans to create a system of community-based medical facilities.

LSU in 2007 plans to open psychiatric beds at University Hospital, which was also damaged by the hurricane.

The "controversial decision to close Charity has meant that mental patients are routinely recycled back to the streets, where they strain the overburdened Police Department and pose a danger to the community and to themselves," the Times-Picayune reports (Walsh/Moller, New Orleans Times-Picayune, 9/5).