More than 8,000 patients receive care for mental illness and addictive disorders just from Jefferson Parish Human Services Authority which runs two health centers in the New Orleans metropolitan area. In New Orleans, doctors are still treating the psychological devastation of Katrina. They’re faced with a lot of barriers, including mental illness itself,” she said. Some may have lost loved ones, and now they have to rebuild their lives. “Many have lost everything, including their jobs. “People have trouble coping with the new normal after a storm,” Funk said. Renée Funk, who manages hurricane response teams for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says it has become clear since Katrina that mental illness and substance abuse aren’t just secondary problems-they are the primary long-term effect of natural disasters. Below, sandbags line the street across from Wagner's home as Hurricane Nate approached earlier this month. As flood waters recede from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate, and survivors work to rebuild communities in Texas, Florida and the Caribbean, mental health experts warn that the hidden psychological toll will mount over time, expressed in heightened rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, domestic violence, divorce, murder and suicide.īrandi Wagner's home in Lafitte, La., left, and the nearby bayou, Bayou Barataria, right. That’s the rough reality that will soon confront regions affected by this year’s string of destructive hurricanes. But public health officials say that, in the aftermath of an extreme weather event like a hurricane, the toll of long-term psychological injuries builds in the months and years that follow, outpacing more immediate injuries and swamping the health care system long after emergency workers go home and shelters shut down. More than 1,800 people died in Katrina from drowning and other immediate injuries. She’s also in treatment for an opioid addiction that developed after she started popping prescription painkillers and drinking heavily to blunt the day-to-day reality of recovering from Katrina. Twelve years later, Wagner is disabled and unable to work because of the depression and anxiety she developed in the wake of the 2005 storm. I was crying all the time, just really losing it.” “We could see the waterline on houses, and rooftop signs with ‘please help us,’ and that big X where dead bodies were found. I didn’t really know what was happening to me,” Wagner, now 48, recalls. “I didn’t think it was the storm at first. It was later, after the storm waters had receded and Wagner went back to New Orleans to rebuild her home and her life that she fell apart. She hung tough while the storm’s 125-mph winds pummeled her home, and powered through two months of sleeping in a sweltering camper outside the city with her boyfriend’s mother. NEW ORLEANS - Brandi Wagner thought she had survived Hurricane Katrina.
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