An irate man seen with a sword on Upperline Street is involved in a standoff with police, authorities said. The 22-year-old was “irate and out of control,” and armed with a sword and other weapons, said NOPD spokesman Garry Flot.
Could be he's just LARPing in anticipation of this weekend's Game of Thrones premiere. Or it could be that he's one of many residents in sore need of our dwindling mental health services.
An abstract by Dr. Potash written in 2008 gives an historical overview of what happens when chronically un-medicated mentally ill folks are unable to get help. The end result is often death in high-profile cases that hit the media. The one we all know the best is the death of Officer Nicola Cotton and her 8-week-old unborn child, killed in the line of duty by a gentleman known in the mental health community, discharged from a mental health hospital to the streets of New Orleans unable to access greatly needed medication to control his delusional, violent behavior. But as time marched on and our cries for help were heard, services for the mentally ill began to come on tap. LSU responded by setting up two emergency trailers, 10 beds apiece, known as the MHERE (mental health emergency room extension) to provide a safe place for folks to be evaluated. They opened a 20-bed inpatient detox unit that would provide medical assistance to those who desired to go into a rehab facility but first needed medical detox. They leased 32 beds on the old Depaul campus for short-term psychiatric hospital stays, not nearly enough, but at least the beginnings of some level of inpatient health care for this population.
How could it be possible that now, 2012, a decision was made to eliminate these services by over 50% as a means to balance a budget? Closing this week will be 10 emergency beds, the entire 20 bed detox unit and 9 inpatient beds at Depaul — all beds that were full to capacity.
By the way, if you're thinking it seems like there are a lot of these police standoffs with mentally ill Uptown residents, it's because there are. This is the second such incident in the past four months and at least the third in the past three years that we can remember having heard about.
It's not too unreasonable to expect more. This week, LSU officials warned again that Governor Jindal's budget will necessitate even greater cuts.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Leaders of LSU's public hospital system said Tuesday that Gov. Bobby Jindal's budget overestimates revenue for its hospitals and clinic network next year and that the system would have to impose cuts to close a multi-million dollar funding gap.
University hospital officials told the House Appropriations Committee that the 10 hospitals and their outpatient facilities that serve the poor and uninsured face an estimated $43 million in cuts in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
"We don't see what's in the executive budget as a standstill, flat budget for us," said Fred Cerise, LSU's vice president for health affairs, disagreeing with a Jindal administration assessment about the governor's proposed 2012-13 budget.
Meanwhile, another $41 million proposed in Jindal's budget recommendations for the hospitals is tied to several assumptions, including the sale of a New Orleans mental health facility, that haven't happened yet. If the assumptions don't pan out, the hospitals could face further reductions.
"We're at a point in our budget where a reduction in funding means a reduction in services," Cerise told lawmakers.
And who knows, maybe Jindal is right. Maybe it is cheaper to treat our city's mental health crisis via the occasional SWAT assault than it is to maintain all of these other services and facilities. On the other hand, we may not be accounting for the hidden cost in chickens.
NEW ORLEANS -- Investigators with the Humane Society are working to unravel clues in a case where chickens are being targeted and killed in the Ninth Ward.
After five pet chickens were found killed and placed in a plastic bag in the Ninth Ward, the Humane Society is looking for the person responsible.
Probably will be okay as long as we keep that sort of thing out of the Hospitality Zone... unless you can convince visitors it's part of some sort of voodoo ritual in which case it looks like we may have suddenly created some jobs.
No comments:
Post a Comment