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As the White House develops a political strategy to blame the terrible conditions on Louisiana, the spokesman for the New Orleans Police Department, Sgt. Paul Accardo, 38, who has been quoted all week in media reports about the disaster, has committed suicide.

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There are going to be more than that, in addition to post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, panic attacks, etc. among evacuees and emergency personnel. This is why changes need to be made by health insurance companies. Most of the time, they’ll pay 80% of medical costs for physical problems, but 0 to 50% for mental disorders. I sent an email to NAMI to see if they can bring this to people’s attention since they have been fighting for mental health parity. I encourage anyone reading this to send an email also. Go here to do so: http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=contact_us&template=/CustomSource/contact/contactEmail.cfm

#134280 | Author: LatashaWillis | Date: Sep 6 2005

Founding Editor Donna Ladd is a writer, journalist and editor from Philadelphia, Miss., a graduate of Mississippi State University and later the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was an alumni award recipient in 2021. She writes about racism/whiteness, poverty, gender, violence, journalism and the criminal justice system. She contributes long-form features and essays to The Guardian when she has time, and was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press. She co-founded the statewide nonprofit Mississippi Free Press with Kimberly Griffin in March 2020, and the Mississippi Business Journal named her one of the state's top CEOs in 2024. Read more at donnaladd.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @donnerkay and email her at donna@mississippifreepress.org.