Chabert adds 9 much-needed psychiatric beds

The psychiatric unit at Chabert Medical Center in Houma will have nine more beds available beginning Aug. 28, increasing the public hospital’s total number of psychiatric- care beds to 24.

“It’s a small addition, but it helps,” said Lisa Schilling, behavioral Rehabilitation services director at Chabert. “There is a mental health crisis across the state and nation.”

The closure of Charity Hospital in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina eliminated 90 psychiatric-care beds. Several private beds have opened in the New Orleans area since the storm.

The state Office of Public Health Region 3, containing Terrebonne, Lafourche, Assumption, St. Mary, St. John, and St. James parishes, and part of St. Charles Parish, has 86 psychiatric-care beds available, including Chabert’s nine new ones. The region has a population of 485,000.

Region 3 has no adolescent psychiatric- care beds, though a few have opened at New Orleans Adolescent Hospital in the uptown section of the city since Hurricane Katrina.

Chabert’s new beds are located in a former acute-care room adjacent to the psychiatric unit in the west wing of the fifth floor. The hospital demolished a wall separating the two areas, modifying the acute-care room to become part of the psychiatric unit.

Chabert’s psychiatric unit is an acute-care facility. Patients can remain no longer than 15 days, and the average length of stay is seven to nine days. Before Katrina, the average stay was four to five days.

However, staff psychiatrists at Chabert can obtain a judicial commitment to hold a patient longer than 15 days if beds are not available at the long-term care state psychiatric hospitals in Mandeville and Jackson. Chabert treats two to three long-term care psychiatric patients on average.

Chabert Medical Center will have 24 psychiatric beds available as of August 28, which should help slightly with the mental health crisis across the state, officials said.