Nightmares Of Katrina
Henry here. I watched some of the coverage of the year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall in New Orleans. People were saying that despite the passing of a year many people were still struggling with aftermath of the hurricane.
They listed a lot of ways that people were struggling physically: no decent shelter, no clean water, electricity, etc. We in the Western World take all these things for granted. How can people survive without them?
But then someone else said that the suicide rate had peaked very high after the hurricane. They also said it was almost impossible to find a doctor to treat oneself, or one had to wait for hours or days in emergency wards waiting to be seen by a professional.
All those things are terrible, but I was struck by something deeper. One person asked another: “What wakes you up at night?” The point being that many of these people are still suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and are awakened by nightmares. This is the same diagnosis that many of the veterans who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have. The people who were in the path of the hurricanes are still suffering and there does not seem to be much help for them, either psychologically or in terms of the basics of life. This is true despite the fact that there is a lot of money that is supposed to be released to help people. I wonder is what is holding it up?