Katrina may long haunt survivors
By Marilyn Elias
USA Today
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Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have left thousands of displaced Americans at higher risk for mental disorders that could long outlast the emergency care they're getting now, evidence from studies of disaster survivors suggests.
The chaos after the storms has several hallmarks that can delay trauma recovery or increase odds of people developing serious disaster-related mental illness, says Daniel Nelson, a child psychiatrist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
"It's troubling because some of the things that buffer people from effects of trauma are just not here, and there are danger signs instead," says Nelson, who counseled adults and children after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Those who fare best after disasters are those who have ample money and can return to their routines quickly with family and friends nearby. But the Katrina and Rita evacuees are disproportionately poor, and many cannot get back to their routines and locales easily, Nelson says.
Those with pre-existing mental illness or earlier traumas, such as rapes or recent family deaths, are the most vulnerable, he says.
The U.S. disaster that most resembles the hurricanes may be the Buffalo Creek dam collapse caused by flooding in Logan County, W.Va. Communities along the creek were wiped out in 1972, and thousands of poor residents were displaced, says psychologist Bonnie Green of Georgetown University School of Medicine. She tracked the mental health of several hundred survivors for up to 17 years.
Children fared better than adults, and everyone improved over time. But more than a dozen years later, Buffalo Creek adult survivors had far worse mental health than residents of a similar community not affected by the flood, Green says.
Among Buffalo Creek adults compared with the similar community:
Most children recovered well, Green says. "What really frightened them was being separated from their parents, and that's what's scary about the hurricanes. You see missing kids on CNN, and the guy asks them, 'What's your mom's name?' and the kid answers, 'It's Mom.' What's going to happen to these kids?"
Nobody knows exactly how many there are. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said more than 2,300 children are still reported missing or are searching for their parents along the Gulf Coast. (But in many of those cases, the children are in fact safe with an evacuated family member or friend and the parent just doesn't know where those people are, amid the many thousands in shelters.)
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Many survivors are still in a "honeymoon" period, grateful to be alive, says Anita Laffey, supervisor of mental-health services for the Red Cross of San Antonio. "Still, you see a lot of depression. You see people not sleeping well, walking the halls at every hour of the night. We've had people crying all the time, disturbing their neighbors."
The sooner survivors can get jobs and housing and have their children settled in schools, the better their chances of avoiding long-term mental disorders, says Robert Pynoos, co-director of the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.
Despite the widespread concern, no one can predict the exact mental-health toll the hurricanes will take, Pynoos says.
"If we move in early to help people, it could make a big, positive difference," he says.
