http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/04/mental-illness-tidal-wave/
This will become the norm across America as more and more state budgets are slashed to the bone from lack of personal tax revenue due to the high rise of unemployment.
And the sad part of it is "We ain't seen nothing yet"
A mental health crisis that has swamped this city's care facilities as surely as Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters washed over the Lower 9th Ward is about to become even worse, care providers say.
New Orleans already is struggling with fewer than half of the inpatient beds for the mentally ill that it had before the 2005 hurricane - even as suicide rates and the number of people with mental health problems have doubled.
That shortage is about to become even more acute with the scheduled closing Sept. 1 of the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital (NOAH), the city's only public hospital still providing inpatient services for the mentally ill.
The closure, designed to trim $14 million from the state's 2010 budget, will leave New Orleans with 133 beds for mental health inpatient care and will make the city jail - with 60 of those beds - the city's largest psychiatric ward.
