Is New Orleans Having a Mental Health Breakdown?

[funkybutt]

A new medical study provides a bleak snapshot of the city and its residents

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1221982,00.html

Over the past several months, psychiatrist James Barbee has witnessed a disturbing trend among his patients in New Orleans — a noticeable slide from post-Katrina anxiety to more serious, and harder to treat, cases of major depression. At the same time, the city’s system for dealing with mental health care is suffering a major breakdown of its own. "People are just wearing down," says Barbee. "There was an initial spirit about bouncing back and recovering, but it's diminished over time, as weeks have become months."

Nearly one year after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,300 and displacing thousands more, frustration over the slow pace of recovery is taking a toll on the region's overall mental health. Initially, complaints reflected what some locals have dubbed "Katrina Brain": general fatigue brought on by the disruption of their lives, difficulty concentrating, mood swings, and mild depression. In most cases, it was nothing that reached critical levels. But since the first of the year, Barbee says, "there's been a steady increase in depression, specifically major depression." Worse, he adds, there's little evidence that things will get better any time soon.

Barbee, a professor at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and director of the Anxiety and Mood Disorders Clinic, sums up the situation with a quote he saw in a local magazine recently: "There's no 'post-' to the post-traumatic stress syndrome in this situation," he says. The stress, in other words, never goes away. "The event is still unfolding. People are losing jobs. They're moving because they're so discouraged by the situation. There's a lot of uncertainty about the future. It's not easy to live here."

on edit: deleted junk

[uppityperson]

1. k&r for aftermath of largest natural disaster to hit USA

Mr.bush is in the "unnatural" category. Thanks for the article.

[BOSSHOG]

2. Its been almost a year Funkybutt

when we were chatting about going to Satchmo Fest. No doubt the stifling heat is not helping the mental situation any. But God Bless the Big Easy. An early T-shirt I noticed after Katrina:

All we want is to get back to Abnormal.

[funkybutt]

3. I'm exhausted BOSS

I need one of those T-shirts ASAP.

Yes, I wore my Satchmo Fest shirt lastnight to Night Out Against Crime. That was the last festival I attended in town before all hell broke lose.

[rudy23]

4. You can't underestimate the power of "this time last year"

Everything, the heat, the kids getting ready to go back to school, even NFL preseason are cues that remind us what was happening one year ago.

First and foremost, is tracking these damn tropical storms! I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of a gun--for days at a time. I was just reading about how Hurricane Chris is supposed to be a minor hurricane that is predicted to graze Southern Florida. That's exactly what Katrina did, before regaining strength in the Gulf and taking a hard right.

[BOSSHOG]

6. And Satchmo Fest at the Mint

My wife and I went to the Satchmo Fest last year and it was our last visit to New Orleans before Katrina. Satchmo is this coming weekend and we will be there but "this time last year" makes the hairs stand up on my bald head.

[otohara]

5. Lost

I'd be so angry all the time, angrier than I already am because of Bush!

Kaboom!:scared: :nuke: :scared:

[meow2u3]

7. This mass mental injury is unprecedented

Thank you, Bush :sarcasm:

[ladjf]

9. The bad mental health is happening all over the country. It's just

worse in New Orleans. The Bush administration and the Republican Party is making the country sick.
Sick people have a difficult time thinking clearly.

[Gully Foyle]

8. So

Regenesis,a Canadian SCFI show about a WHO like agency, recently did a couple of episodes that seem very prescient now.
http://www.tv.com/regenesis/show/29414/episode_guide.html?season=2&tag=season_nav;next
Gene in a bottle and The Wild and Innocent.
The plot line was a string of suicides of normal people start happening in Arkansas.
While investigation they discover parasite worms dredged up by Katrina that realese a chemical in the hosts body. It leads to depression and death.
Consider this was filmed well before the depression stories started making the news.
Or maybe the writers had some inside information.

[Acadia Blue]

10. I have hurricane damage to my house. I am still waiting for the interior

to be fixed. My 4 acres of heavy forest is gone. It looks like a bomb went off and knocked everything down at all angles. I can not afford to have the trees removed. Its depressing as all hell. I have a new rood and am waiting in line for the interior repairs. Everyone is waiting in line unless they are millionairs or can do it themselves. Its depressing. My yard will stay as it is as it would cost about 40,000, to pick up over 2000 trees.

[funkybutt]

13. I wish you all the best

we are back in our house now, doing a lot of the stuff ourselves. Rent on top of mortgage has eaten into our insurance money. We have almost no furniture and bare sheetrock on the walls. No trim work, no countertops or doors. At least we're home though, and THAT feels good. I'm so sorry for your incredible losses and hope you can get back into your home soon.

[outofbounds]

23. Its seems to me like you could sell some of the

trees to Ga Pacific, Union Camp, Weyerhauser Just a thought but that is a lot of lumber or pulp. If its accessible. just a thought. God Bless.
on edit, They have some pretty amazing machinery that can get in the boggiest places, or just clear a path as well.

[Alacrat]

24. I sold my timber after the tornado hit

I had 21 trees down in my yard, most very large pine trees. I made a $400 profit, enough to cover the cost of cutting a few large hickory trees, before they hit my house. There were a lot of trees down here, but nothing close to NOLA, or MS.

[pitohui]

15. we don't need parasites to be depressed

no offense to our kind friends in canada, many who came and picked people off roofs in chalmette at a time when the usa gov't couldn't be arsed to do it...but we don't need to postulate any mysterious parasites causing depression

if you aren't depressed and upset, you MUST be nuts

i'm not sure why normal human response to loss -- normal human grieving -- must now be classed as a disease

only psychopaths don't grieve when terrible things happen

there is a profit motive and drugs to be sold classifying normal human grief as a disease but i'm not buying it

[KamaAina]

11. NOLA has long attracted those outside the psychiatric mainstream

Trust me. I was once one of them. So was Barry Cowsill (R.I.P.). :(

So on top of the still-not-post-traumatic stress disorder, you have who knows how many thousands of people who had pre-existing mental health issues, and basically no way to deal with them. "All we want is to get back to abnormal", indeed!

I had a brief glimpse in a dream state last night of one of my dear friends from the old days who is a counselor. I sometimes wonder how she's doing these days...

Freudian near-typo: I had 'gert' for 'get'; for non-locals, "Gert Town" is one of the hardest hit and still largely un-resettled neighborhoods.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. Anyone who thinks that Bush or the Republicans are going to give a damn

about taking care of Americans in need, are sadly mistaken. Depression is a natural reaction to our current societal problems.

[Megahurtz]

14. ONGOING PTSD.

;(

[pitohui]

16. they say it can't be "post" because it isn't over

that's the statement of most significant merit in that article as far as i'm concerned

otherwise what's their point? there is no doctor who can make what happened not have happened, no amount of therapy and talking things out will change anything, no popping any pill will do anything except create new drug dependencies

[Lisa]

17. broken or nonexistent housing can be a trauma all on its own ...

... let alone all the other things that came along with Katrina -- losing people, the stress of being ignored/mistreated by various government agencies, being uprooted.

There was a study a while back which found that homeless people tend to show more signs of clinical depression. They didn't respond to medication and counselling ... not surprisingly, since the background cause was not biochemical, but the stress of not having access to decent housing. When housing was made available, they got better.

[pitohui]

18. exactly

that's my point

what's medication/counseling going to do? we need something real not people playing with our damn heads!

[Lisa]

19. plus it turned out that providing housing was actually cheaper ...

.... in the long run, once they'd looked at the costs of medication, tests, and counsellors/shrinks.

[KamaAina]

20. Is there a psychiatric branch of Medecins sans Frontieres?

(Doctors without Borders) If so, get 'em in there, stat!

Hell, New Orleans could use the original, too. You do realize it's been officially declared a medical shortage area, just like Cicely, Alaska in "Northern Exposure", right? (Is it too late for me to get into med school? :-) ) And that several hospitals are STILL closed as we approach the ONE-YEAR anniversary?

I could go off on a rant about the crisis in the rest of the city's infrastructure, like the power going out every time someone turns on her hair dryer, or the water that's still in the gas lines, but that'd be off topic...

[Lisa]

21. yes ...

They operate several programmes in war zones and disaster recovery areas.

http://www.msf.org/msfinternational/invoke.cfm?component=article&objectid=67AC8E1E-3EF1-4B0C-A7D473B4C8B1B2B2&method=full_html

From their report on the tsunami:

"Nurse Maria Meo was with the first team from MSF to land on Aceh's shores. She recalls those first few days, when the trauma resulting from the tsunami became increasingly apparent.

"There was one village I will never forget. We were the first aid workers to arrive and people had been eating leaves to survive. While the doctors and nurses treated the wounded and identified patients requiring evacuation to the hospital in Banda Aceh, I tried to calm the villagers by explaining what had happened - a very basic but very necessary first step. "These people had been cut off from all communication and had no idea of the extent of the devastation caused by the tsunami. As far as they knew they were the only people affected. "And then I just listened. People were so desperate to tell their story they were literally shouting over each other."

"We were treating hundreds of patients in our mobile clinics every day and as you attended their wounds they would invariably break down and cry. We were also overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients coming forward with psychosomatic complaints. Other people were just wandering the streets in a state of distress. We desperately needed psychologists to refer these patients to.""

[NMMNG]

22. I was reading articles months ago

reporting serious cases of depression in people from NOLA in the aftermath of Katrina. These people have suffered trauma, loss and now long-term instability in their lives. It's no wonder their mental health is suffering.