New Orleans Mental Health Care

This article in The Gambit blog got me thinking about my experience with the low-income mental health system in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina:

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2008-05-06/healthfeat.php

The low-income mental health options are extremely limited in New Orleans, which is a city where mental health issues run rampant. While mental illness can often be genetic, symptoms are almost always going to be magnified when there are no options for continuing care… especially after a traumatic event like a major hurricane.

As a low-income (or no-income) person or family in New Orleans, your only option for psychiatric medication in the parish is Central City Behavioral Health. Central City provides medication and monthly doctor visits for free, and will also provide you with a hefty reference sheet for other services. To get an appointment with Central City Behavioral Health, call 504-569-6650, but expect to wait up to 60 days before you can get your first appointment (which does not typically include a prescription). When you do get your medication prescribed, the organization will try to get you as much as possible in the form of free samples so that your out-of-pocket expenses are at a minimum. Prescription drug plans can come in handy for the pills that require a pharmacy to fill.

For counseling/therapy, Care NOLA provides sliding scale services to low income individuals/families, but the cheapest service you’ll see there is group therapy for $20 (if you make under $20,000 a year and can prove it).

For inexpensive sliding scale therapy, try Trinity Counseling Center. While Trinity is an Episcopalian Church, their therapy does not have to have anything to do with religion and you aren’t expected to subscribe to any religious denomination. Trinity has a policy that nobody will be turned away for counseling services, but I will warn you that wait times to see a counselor can be upwards of 2 months (at least it was a year ago, I’m not sure how long it takes now). Call Trinity at 504-522-7557.

A great resource for anyone living in New Orleans is Via Link, a hotline that connects people to information and organizations area-wide. Via Link can be reached at 504-895-5550, but they also have a crisis line at 504-523-2673. My personal experience with Via Link has been great – that’s how I found Central City Behavioral Health & Trinity when I needed services in a post-Katrina New Orleans, where finding available services was incredibly hard to do.

Hearing about Jindal’s reallocation of mental health funds in order to provide additional mental health services to the poor makes me feel relieved about New Orleans’ mental health services. There are simply too many people in New Orleans who need counseling who are just unable to receive it.