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Major Gaps in Mental Health Care for Louisiana Children Termed Crisis

New Orleans--Vast deficiencies remain 10 years into the state of Louisiana’s effort to privatize care for children with severe behavioral health needs, according to Monica Stevens, PhD, assistant professor of Psychiatry at the Tulane School of Medicine.

Stevens, speaking to the Louisiana United Methodist Children and Family Services (LUMCFS) today in New Orleans, also noted that major gaps in community-based mental health services create overreliance on intense residential therapeutic care.

LUMCFS operates residential therapeutic programs in three Louisiana cities and a therapeutic foster care program throughout the state. LUMCFS’s leaders today provided a progress report to supporters on the new children’s home now under construction to serve south Louisiana, including New Orleans. The old Methodist Children’s Home on Washington Avenue in New Orleans shut down permanently after Hurricane Katrina, and proceeds from the sale of the property were dedicated LUMCFS for construction of the new home.

Stevens’ newly released research demonstrated the dire need for additional residential psychiatric care for children suffering from trauma, abandonment, abuse, and neglect. She highlighted the major need for additional psychiatrists, psychologists, and licensed social workers. In Louisiana, there are 38 parishes with no psychiatrists, 21 parishes with no pediatrician; and 7 parishes have no licensed social workers. “The availability of providers in Louisiana is a desperate situation in which too few providers are responsible for the care of vast number of individuals; making the delivery of specialized, high quality care a daunting task,” said Stevens in the presentation held at Café Reconcile in New Orleans.

In closing, Stevens noted that “nearly a decade ago Louisiana families were left with very little preventative and intervention care options. Therefore, it is no surprise that the pendulum now needs to swing back to increasing the availability of intensive treatment settings while simultaneously building back our community-based care to provide a true continuum of care. Even the strongest advocates for community-based care acknowledge the need for residential and/or partial hospitalization programs to cover the inevitable gaps in care and respond to the need of the state’s most affected individuals.”

Also speaking at the luncheon were Rick Wheat, LUMCFS President and CEO, on the “Strength of the Methodist Home-Bridging the Gap”; Marlín Giacona, Program Director, Methodist Children’s Home of Southeast Louisiana, and Greater New Orleans on “A Child’s Journey in Healing.” For more information, go to lumcfs.org and mchsela.com.