Dr. Mark Townsend, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, described the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the mental health field and the current status of mental health services in this part of the state: 

"We really are stuck, because we do not have . . . the money yet, apparently, to build new clinics. . . Outreach programs, I think would be essential. I am actually the medical director of one that ran out of the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital right after the storm. So yes, I understand that Governor Jindal . . . recommended to the legislature to provide money for three ACT teams which do just that, they . . . take the treatment to the patient. They’re not up and running yet; I have yet to see them in my hospital, but that’s what’s needed. . ."

"The other pieces that are missing, that were there before the storm, [are] intensive out-patient programs so that when you came out of the hospital . . . you would have intensive treatment for a few weeks or months and then go to the mental health centers. And, before you went to the hospital, we had a crisis stabilization unit, which was more or less an intensive unit that worked with people to try to keep them out. And those are the two pieces that are missing completely now."

When asked about the extent of post-traumatic stress disorder in the New Orleans area, Dr. Townsend said there had been a 10% increase. Dr. Townsend described three groups of survivors:

"There are folks who went through harrowing situations and are fine, and denied that they had any psychiatric disease; there are folks who . . . had qualified for PTSD or major depression for a few weeks after the storm and then resolved; and there are people . . . who experienced PTSD, depression and substance abuse the whole time and continue to. Those are the folks that are part of this continuous increase in mental illness that’s lasted until the present."

According to Dr. Townsend, those who were more likely to experience PTSD as a result of the hurricane had lost property and were middle age, female, and non-white. The lack of mental health services in the lower 9^th Ward creates another layer of stress for residents who must travel to New Orleans for those services: 

"The water came in very quickly. There are no clinics there, and people are water phobic so we’re asking these new residents who have come back home . . . with PTSD to cross the Industrial Canal, to get to clinics on the other side in the other part of the city. So, I think those people really do need explicit and targeted outreach in the lower Ninth. There needs to be, I think, a bricks and mortar clinic there. I think there’s absolutely no way around it. There are people that because of their PTSD that are not getting treated . . . Whether it’s bricks and mortar or whether it’s an ACT team that really targets that area, it has to happen."

In describing the current status of psychiatric care at LSU, Dr. Townsend distinguished between federally funded programs and fee-for-service programs:

"I think where . . . things have been relatively preserved, actually has been LSU. It’s been the training programs, the medical school and the residencies . . . because they’re funded by the state and there’s special ways that they get compensated by Medicaid and Medicare. We’re fine. It’s the parts of my department that are based on fee-for-service, that, it’s been difficult, because we need money to hire emergency psychiatrists. Because we do not have an emergency psychiatry residency. . . I’m sure it’s the same all over the place… Our metropolitan human services districts . . . need to hire; they have many empty positions. . . ."

"We . . . were able to contract with [the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill] so we have transitional workers who will take patients from De Paul and bring them to their homes and to the mental health centers . . . But we have transitional workers downtown; there’s no place for them. They got the contract, but there’s no place to put them. And so we really do have still critical bricks and mortar problems. "

"[University Hospital is] such a little hospital . . . I do not know how big the hospital should be, but it definitely needs to be bigger. We need more psych beds, and we need more med search beds."