Posted on Thu, May. 08, 2008

-- Nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of Coast children still need mental health counseling and are not be getting help, say local mental health professionals and community organizers. This week is National Children's Mental Health Week, and all over the state people are sporting green ribbons in support of children's well-being.

Kids are suffering from the destruction of the storm and the lack of stability in housing and schools; it is putting them at risk, said Donna Alexander, executive director of the United Way of South Mississippi. These children, according to data from Gulf Coast Mental Health Center in Gulfport, could number 50,000 or more. Alexander said they could fall prey to drugs and alcohol, or may even drop out of school.

There is a need for suicide prevention, and substance abuse and trauma therapy programs, said Sandra Parks, director of the Division of Children and Youth Services at the state Department of Mental Health.

"The first year and a half after Hurricane Katrina, people were concerned about meeting physical needs. Mental health didn't concern them. It didn't show up until one-and-a-half or two years later," she said.

Providers at Gulf Coast Mental Health Center specialize in trauma counseling, said Shelley Foreman, its director of the Family, Adolescent and Child Team. The providers treat about 1,200 of the nearly 50,000 who may need help.

There is a lack of clinical providers and no outpatient pediatric mental health providers, said Michael Zieman, director of behavioral health services at Memorial Behavioral Health in Gulfport at a recent meeting with the Sun Herald. Rebuilding and fortifying a mental health community on the Coast is going to take time.

"It's not a quick fix. We realize it will take five to 10 years to accomplish," he said.

But it's also a community issue, said Alexander.

"In isolation, mental health providers can't do this themselves. It's beyond the clinic and beyond the schools," she said.

Foreman said creating community programs to influence overall mental health is different from what happens in clinical settings, but a stronger community can improve clinical outcomes.

To that end, the United Way, the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, Memorial Behavioral Health and the Memorial Hospital Foundation and others have created the Mississippi Coast Mental Health Cooperative.

The cooperative wants to get the community more involved in mental health - not necessarily treatment, but understanding needs and knowing where to go. It also wants to bring mental-health students down to shoulder some of the burden and provide training hours. Finally, said Zieman, the cooperative wants to work with the state to streamline mental health-provider requirements, so those wanting to come here from other states and help will have fewer hoops to jump through.

In conversations with faith-based, school-based and community-based providers, said Jeri Davis, a health-care consultant for the cooperative, the various groups do not know what the others are doing. The cooperative is trying to organize mental-health providers at clinics and in the community, to better understand what children's needs are, what services are available and how best to deliver them.