Mental Health Service System Capacities to Deal with Disasters

Mental Health Service System Capacities to Deal with Disasters
June 2002

Principal Investigator: Carole Siegel, Ph.D.; Co-Investigators: Judy Samuels, Ph.D., Eugene Laska, Ph.D.

PROJECT GOALS

To provide information and methodology to assess the current and extended capacity requirements of a mental health system to respond to disasters.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS

Using available administrative data sets, data were provided to NYSOMH for their needs assessment plan post- 9/11 on the NYSOMH and on the Department of Veterans Affairs current service capacity. An attempt was made to estimate mental health services currently provided by individual practitioners not working in these systems and by non-mental health specialists. This task proved daunting and was not accomplished. A mathematical formulation of the equation to estimate extended capacity was developed and highlighted the gaps in information. A paper has been written and submitted for publication.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Highlighting information gaps suggests areas that require new data collection efforts.

PLANS

Investigators will continue to work with NYSOMH planners to develop approaches for filling the gaps. They also will work on extending the methodology to allow an estimation of staffing capacities that are required to meet the need of persons with post disaster mental health problems. An attempt will be made to obtain estimates for NYS with currently available data with modeling approaches used to fill the gaps.

Entered: June 17, 2002

PUBLICATIONS

Siegel C, Laska EM, Mesiner M. (2003). Estimating capacity requirements for mental health services after a disaster has occurred: A call for new data. Submitted for publication.