LUCY SCHULTZE

The community mental-health center serving four Mississippi Gulf Coast counties is working toward a plan to blend its services with that of a primary-health clinic.

The Gulf Coast Mental Health Clinic (GCMHC) in Pearlington has applied for a grant through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to forge an alliance with Coastal Family Health, a fellow nonprofit clinic also serving patients on a sliding-fee basis.

“We’re now working together on a trial basis,” said Jeff Bennett, director of GCMHC. “The goal is to blend primary and mental-health care so that when folks come in to a primary-care facility, and the doctor or nurse notices they might also be depressed, they’ll be able to seen right there instead of sending them back and forth.”

Although it has not yet been decided which of the several models for integrating care this venture would follow, it would help both organizations better cope with the tightening of resources after Hurricane Katrina.

Among the 230 employees of GCMHC, more than half had their homes destroyed or severely damaged by the hurricane in the fall of 2005. The center’s roster of therapists, social workers and other staff members was suddenly down to 140 people. Two years later, it’s back up to 180 people but still short of supplying the demand for their services.

“It’s a very competitive market down here now,” Bennett said. “We have trouble recruiting and retaining staff.”

For-profit and faith-based mental-health providers, which have arrived after the storm, tend to offer better salaries than GCMHC, Bennett said. The clinic relies on Medicaid reimbursements through the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, county taxes and contributions, among other funding sources.

Meanwhile, storm survivors continue to deal with Katrina’s aftermath — from elderly residents faced with the challenge of starting over, to children still mourning the loss of homes, people or pets.

“You hear a lot about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is something we didn’t see that much of (before Hurricane Katrina),” he said. “People are just worn out from fighting contractors and insurance companies, trying to get back in their homes.”

With exhaustion and malaise, problems like substance abuse arise, typically followed by a rise in domestic abuse, Bennett said. Clinical depression has also been a common complaint among GCMHC’s caseload of about 6,000 patients.



December 2007