"The metal bars and barbed-wire fences associated with older mental institutions like NOAH represent "not a system [but] a failure," said Alan Levine, secretary of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals. "It's a dinosaur, a relic of what mental health systems looked like 20 years ago."
I found this particularly puzzling since I worked on the NOAH campus for several years and I've never noticed "barbed-wire fences" anywhere. The same is true for metal bars.....the only metal bars are the gates at the four entrances. Wrought iron gates are common in New Orleans. I wonder if Mr. Levine has actually toured the campus at all. I'm not saying the buildings are in pristine condition - they certainly are not. But interior painting was going on inside the main building as recently as May.
So, I've read the entire series and viewed the accompanying videos and find, in all, an adequate coverage of the state of mental health facilities here. Honestly, I thought the videos had more impact than the written word and I hope readers took the time to view them.
I had a comment on my first post about this series from Judyb cautioning that the comments on the story were heartless. As I told her, I stopped reading comments in the aftermath of Katrina when so many were so vicious. But, for some reason, today I did read the comments. Yes, they were pretty awful but comment six from CrescentCityRay just broke my heart and it was worth slogging through the previous five comments. I just hope his words and his experience with post-Katrina mental illness shamed those other commenters. But I doubt it.
This post is dedicated to CrescentCityRay. Here is his comment:
I am one of the crazy people from a flooded area in New Orleans. We rebuilt our home - above the Katrina flood line. The kids are back in school and seem ok. Over 60% of our neighbors are back. Things are looking up. Nevertheless, I cry uncontrollably nearly every day. While I have been fortunate (up until recently) to have work since the levee failures, the crying and stuff has made it a lot harder to be productive in my work and I don't think co-workers want to be around people like me. I think of suicide daily too. Yes, I am getting talk therapy as well as medications that make me cry less at the expense of my motivation and attention. Call me names if you must, but I am doing the best I can. Why are we feeling so crazy? There are a number of reasons: 1. People claim our disaster, in New Orleans, was a natural disaster, when in fact our outfall canal floodwalls fell down long before even being overtopped by floodwaters because of stupid engineering mistakes made in the floodwall foundation designs by US Army Corps of Engineers' engineers as reported in all three levee failure investigation reports. But, many people choose to blame us flood victims for these floodwall failures and that really hurts my feelings. 2. People everywhere call us bad names, claim we are responsible for our losses, and do not begin to acknowledge the extent of our destruction (140 square miles of deep urban flooding by salt water that sat for weeks). 3. The Engineers that did this to us are in charge of rebuilding our flood protection and and we fear they are purposely designing unreliable structures again. 4. Most of our local politicians are worthless. Our future does sometimes seem hopeless. 5. Politicians and much of the general public made our disaster nothing more than another partisan issue. The previous and current administrations have made unkept promises. Many of us feel very disillusioned about our governments at every level. 6. The pain is not just mine. While we lost everything we ever had and have suffered and struggled to get home, the same thing happened to my neighbors, relatives and nearly everyone I ever knew. I haven't been able to help relatives as I would like because of my over abundance of problems and lack of resources. I look around at my missing elderly neighbors and get really angry at how our elderly and disabled have been and are being left to die without any help from anyone. 7. Of course, the initial Katrina response was a nightmare, but only a small part of the ongoing pain felt in New Orleans. I wish the evil posters that seem to wish we were dead would stop their hostility. I don't want to be crazy and cry everyday. I am ashamed of my mental illness. Believe me, it is very humiliating. I want to work and support my family and continue to help rebuild my community. My doctors say I must reduce my stress - yea right. Vindication might help.
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