Dr. Richard F. Dalton Jr.

Psychiatrist Richard F. Dalton, Jr., MD, HS'75-'79, is so swamped in private practice that he says he "feels enormously guilty because I have to turn people down all the time. I wake up at 5:30 a.m. and work until 6:30 p.m."

While more than a third of the city's population still has not returned, residents slowly are coming back and rebuilding their homes. Unfortunately, the health care workers are not following them, and the trickling influx of people-both returning residents and migrant workers coming to help rebuild-are adding to the already stressed health care system.

Dalton, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Tulane and the clinical director of mental health for the Juvenile Justice Program through LSU, says the city is filled with "walking wounded-they go to work day by day and are trying to get it together. People here feel an enormous anxiety and worry about the future. In children there is increased anger and acting out in school. It's somewhat of a crisis."

Children feed off of adults' emotions, Dalton says, and he is seeing a lot of children absorbing the worries of their parents. "There are issues of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but there is a significant number of children who don't have PTSD but have sub-threshold symptoms that clearly warrant treatment," he says. "It's nebulous anxiety issues that really reflect the parental concerns."

Riding It Out

Yet, despite the many new challenges they face, Miller, Zakris, Dalton, and
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Dalton says he knows many friends and colleagues who are ready to throw in the towel and leave. The ones who never came back from the start "are physicians in their 30s and 40s with young children who need schools," he says.
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Zakris, Miller, and Dalton consider themselves extremely lucky to have survived the copious downsizings at their respective institutions.
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Even basic necessities like supermarkets are missing to the degree that they existed prior to Katrina, Dalton says.
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Rich get richer, and the rest of us can go take a flying leap....

Richard Dalton, MD

Medical Review Psychiatrist

By Richard Dalton, MD; Michael S. Scheeringa, MD, MPH; Charles H. Zeanah, MD
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Richard Dalton, MD, is with the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana.
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Address correspondence to Richard Dalton, MD, Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, 1440 Canal St, TB 52, New Orleans, LA 70116; e-mail rdalton@tulane.edu; fax 504-988-4264.

Dr. Dalton, Dr. Scheeringa, and Dr. Zeanah have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Richard Dalton, MD; Michael S. Scheeringa, MD, MPH; Charles H. Zeanah, MD