Rebuilding New Orleans' psyche

The Headline today is from the Baltimore Sun. The headline is, "Rebuilding New Orleans' psyche" by Marc Siegel on August 29, 2007. Today is the second anniversary of Katrina.

Best Quote: Yet the city's two major hospitals, at LSU and Tulane, lost their in-patient psych units in the storm. The facility run by LSU was destroyed. The DePaul Tulane Behavioral Health Center had a 110-bed psych hospital that was permanently damaged. So far, LSU has been able to reopen a 20-bed emergency psych unit (only five are in use, for detox), and it's slated to open a 33-bed acute adult unit. The Office of Mental Health reports that of 578 in-patient psych beds in New Orleans at the time of the storm, only 236 remain. The city's major remaining in-patient facility is the state-run New Orleans Adolescent Hospital, where Diane Graham works; its 45 beds now must be used for adults as well as children. One community facility, the Enhanced Health Treatment Center, has reopened in New Orleans East - without a penny in federal funding. In the suburbs, Jefferson Parish takes some overflow, but regional hospitals accept few patients, as they are pressed to meet local needs.