Katrina survivors mentally scarred but find support in each other

BOSTON - Hurricane Katrina doubled the rate of serious mental illness in areas ravaged by the storm but the urge to commit suicide fell, partly because survivors bonded with each other, a Harvard-led study has found.

Billed as the biggest mental health study yet after Katrina killed about 1500 people along the Gulf Coast, the survey showed that 15 per cent of 1043 survivors were diagnosed with a serious mental illness five to eight months after the storm.

That figure suggests about 200,000 people from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi face serious mental illness because of Katrina, with about a third suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and the rest depression, said lead researcher Ronald Kessler.

Nearly 85 per cent of survivors had a major financial, income, or housing loss, and more than a third endured extreme physical adversity after Katrina struck a year ago and flooded 80 per cent of New Orleans, the survey showed. Nearly 23 per cent encountered extreme psychological adversity.

About 25 per cent reported having nightmares about their experiences - a figure that rises to nearly 50 per cent for people who lived in New Orleans.

But Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, said the number of people reporting a desire to kill themselves declined, in part because many survivors had forged stronger ties with loved ones and their community.

"We found an extraordinarily high proportion of our sample who said that despite the understandable sadness with all they lost and the understandable anxieties about the future ... that they felt closer to their loved ones, they felt connected to the community in a way they didn't before," he said.

"They felt much more religious, they felt that they had a purpose in their life and a meaning," he said, noting that 88.5 per cent of the survivors in the survey said Katrina had helped them develop a deeper sense of meaning or purpose in life. "Those are the people where these suicidal tendencies decreased," he said.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, was published in the World Health Organisation's Bulletin newsletter.

The researchers compared their survey with a snapshot of mental health taken in the same geographic area by the Federal government in 2001-03.

The researchers plan to interview the same 1043 survivors over seven years to track their recovery.

The survey also showed that nearly 90 per cent of the survivors had heard about the hurricane more than a day before it hit, and the majority at least three days in advance.

Among those who stayed behind, up to 42 per cent did not evacuate because they did not want to go, while up to 46 per cent said they were unable to leave. About 40 per cent of low-income people said they were unable to leave against 6 per cent of people with high incomes, it said.

A significant number of survivors may also leave their hurricane-battered homes, the survey showed. Nearly one in four living in their pre-hurricane homes are considering moving to another area.

- REUTERS