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Since mid-summer, demand has tripled for a new mental health program offered at no charge to those who have no insurance or have no home. When the Psychiatry Outreach Program (POP) opened its doors on July 23, three or four people showed up at the Jackson Free Clinic on a Saturday afternoon complaining of depression, anxiety, insomnia or some other concern that might have remained untreated. Three months later, on October 15, the number was 11; that's how many homeless or uninsured Jackson-area residents had signed up for appointments with the staff of volunteers led by attending physician Dr. Chasity Torrence, assistant professor of psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. “They're fighting for a place to be seen,” she said. It's because of this struggle - magnified by the state's recent cuts to mental health programs - that Torrence developed POP with psychiatry residents Dr. Charles Richardson and Dr. Matthew Walker. The thrust of POP was inspired by a presentation Torrence and others witnessed in the spring from Dr. Sheryl Fleisch, assistant professor at Vanderbilt University and medical director of a psychiatry program she and her team take to the streets of Nashville. Eventually, that's what POP's volunteers would like to do: “We want to go to the patients, not make them all come to the clinic,” said Richardson, a fourth-year resident. “Maybe one day a week we could offer 'street psychiatry' - that's kind of the working name.” For now, patients make appointments at the student-run Jackson Free Clinic next to the Humble Church of God in Christ on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in west Jackson; begun more than 15 years ago, the clinic, with its staff of medical students supervised by physicians, provides free, non-emergency care to adults, ages 18 to 65, who can't pay.
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