Published: March 18, 2026
By: Kylah Babin, LSU Manship School News Service
BATON ROUGE — Concerns about rising mental health issues have led the Louisiana Department of Health to seek to reallocate $6.5 million to expand its crisis response system.
The department wants to use the extra money to help fund a new statewide hub that supports the Louisiana Crisis Response System.
Health officials discussed the request during a House Appropriations Committee meeting this week.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 838,000 adults in Louisiana had a mental health condition as of March 2025. That is three times the size of Baton Rouge’s population. About 74,000 Louisiana teens experience a major depressive episode, and 49,000 teens in the state have serious thoughts of suicide.
But more than 3 million people in Louisiana live in communities without enough mental health professionals.
“And today, it’s quite spotty,” said Louisiana Department of Health Secretary Bruce D. Greenstein. “There are gaps in between modalities of care, and this is the beginning of using crisis to help be the overarching modality of care, so there are no open spots,” he said, referring to the hub.
Read more at The Advertiser.
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 
Leave a comment