The recent slaying of New Orleans police officer, Nicola Cotton, 24, who was kill in a one-on-one struggle with a man who appears to have a history of mental problems has shed further light upon the pressing needs of a City devastated by Hurricane Katrina.Those needs is mental health care.
Yesterday, Bobby Jindal, the new Louisiana Governor discussed that issue in a press conference and stressed the importance of dealing with the many medical needs and in a post-Katrina world.
One of the individuals who know first-hand of this very sore problem is Dr. Lorrie Metzler who is an Emergency Room Physician and Louisiana President of the FBI Citizen’s Academy Alumni Association and medical commentator for Bayoubuzz.
"There is a critical shortage of both in-patient and out-patient mental health care facilities in the metropolitan New Orleans area and Louisiana. Patients, their families, and other health care professionals have faced a crisis in trying to find adequate mental health care facilities for patient needs,” said Dr. Metzler.
“After Katrina and the exodus of physicians from our area, the specialty with the greatest loss in the New Orleans area was Psychiatrists, with reportedly a greater than 80% loss of mental health care physicians and psychologists, said Metzler. Post Katrina, there has been some return of these physicians, but there still remains a desperate situation in Louisiana for adequate care. Unfortunately, many of these patients remain on the streets and Emergency Room beds are held while awaiting mental health transfers."
The key question is with the legislative session fast approaching, many citizens want to know if the area can receive additional help from the federal government or others and whether that part of the state budget could be cut.
The short answer to the mental health crisis is to reopen Big Charity Hospital. It had a 97-bed Crisis Intervention Unit which could receive patients for evaluation which police officers and others could entrust hospital police and specially-trained staff, freeing the NOPD to return quickly to the street for police work. Big Charity had the capacity to both evaluate and stablize people fraught with psychiatric trauma -- safeguarding both the patients and the wider community. It was not perfect and was often short of beds before Hurricane Katrina -- hence returning it to service along with its Level One Trauma Center now would go a long way towards resolving our current crisis. To those who suggest that Big Charity could not be reopened because of the lack of accreditation, emergency "surge capacity" regulations remain in place to do so, affording a return of this much-needed health facility. Governor Jindal should order his Department of Health and Hospitals' chief Alan Levine to reopen Charity -- undoing at least some of the damage that was caused by its closure by LSU Health Care Services Division (the latter whom has been sued for doing so -- for info about this go to http://www.replacethecare.org. Written by gobraduno
on 1/30/2008
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For the past two days we have thought of two families who have suffered disaster. One involved the death of a lovely,valiant young woman, the other involed a continuing problem with a mentally disturbed man. As we would suffer from the death of any family member we would also turn our sight on the cause of that death. The disclosure of the failure of agencies to provide assistance to the family of the perpertrator of the crime is the cause of the death in this instance. Stymied by laws that prohibited them access to his personal records and courts that could not help and agencies that were lax, we have to wonder what will be done. The family of both should file suits for their loss, ask for a jury, and demand that justice be given to both families. The root cause lies not with the family of either of the two people in this crime - the deceased and the perpertrator. It lies elsewhere. It is time to settle this issue and time to avoid some other similar event.
Written by RhettsWife
on 1/30/2008
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