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Mental Health After a Tragedy: Lessons from Katrina
The RISK studies on survivors’ mental health after the Katrina disaster provide a road map of how we should respond to disastrous hurricanes in the future.
Once the winds stopped blowing and the rains had ceased, many people who lived through monster storms like Katrina faced staggering losses and severe disruption of their lives. They were also challenged by mental health issues after the storm was over. These included anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) brought on by or exacerbated by the disaster.
Thanks to long-term studies of Hurricane Katrina survivors, we know a lot more about the mental health effects of living through catastrophic storms and their aftermath.
The studies, known as the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina Project or RISK, are unique in disaster research because the researchers had fortuitously collected baseline data on the study subjects before Katrina struck.
The RISK studies of mental health after a disaster
In 2004, a year before the hurricane, the researchers obtained funding to look at whether performance-based scholarships would help young low-income New Orleans single parents enrolled in community college increase…
