9.24.2007
The Ongoing Wounds of Hurricane Katrina
Traumatological loss due to a critical incident does not go way quickly. In fact it is just the opposite. Critical Incident traumatalogical loss also known as critical incident thanostic loss has a snowball affect that builds and gathers speed. It is a dirty snowball of sticks and stones of broken homes, lives, dreams and hopes. It can feel like Dante’s hell for those who MUST live through it.
Additionally there is compounded and complex grief that has not been resolved in the Katrina experience. The more complex the grief and compounding of the losses that are experienced individually and collectively, the harder it is to accomplish the tasks of grieving when the world around you is no longer grieving and desperately wants as well as unmercifully expects you to STOP GRIEVING if you are one of those from the Katrina experience.
Unrealistic expectations by society and many in the helping profession think that since it has been 2 years or so since the ravishing winds tore through the gulf coast, that grief, pain and suffering should be over with is absolutely outlandish. These people who were so profoundly affected by Hurricane Katrina as still living in the early stages of the graveyard walk to the grave. There is little resolution to the traumas Hurricane Katrina Survivors experienced, the pain and suffering as well as the wounds that are only getting more complex and more silent in our society because our general society does not want to: see no grief-- hear no grief --speak no grief – feel no grief.
Society in general does not want to have to contend with the elongated sticky stuff of grief. It is elongated in that critical incident loss does not go away quickly. It is impossible for it to be push away into the dustpan of history.
No disrespect to a rape victim, but a mass critical incident event has so many more components to it from the publicity to the dashed hope of recovery to the abandonment that is experienced on top of all the compounded frustrations of trying to rebuild lives that are so shattered in so many ways.
Such scaring events as Hurricane Katrina may not be able to be resolved in a few years; it may take decades and even generations to work through it. Since we have frankly not done even a marginal job of helping with the emotional thanostic issues of death, loss and non-reconstruction of individual and community lives, I seriously doubt if we will see a the possibility of a full recovery for a very long time.
Think about it. A rape victim may be able to go to a place that will feel safe for her/him that is at least familiar and has things that speak of love and comfort from another time and circumstance. It may be a pair of slippers, a photograph, the fact that they can take all the precautions they wish to begin the process to feel safer in their own skin and environment.
Now think of the person who has NO slippers, nothing that is familiar that might speak of comfort and there is no door left of their home to lock to feel safer. What is left is marred or destroyed by mud and dirty smelly water.
I, in no way want to minimize in any way the terrible experience a person who has been raped has experienced and the pain of such a recovery journey. It is a ghastly theft of personal sense of safety, personhood and personal dignity from someone else. I stand in awe and admire all those who live through and rebuild their lives in spite of and because of such tragic events.
What I am saying is that in a mass fatality of a mega-regional community trauma, the recovery process is nothing like which occurs on a personal or even on a family / cohort basis. Hurricane Katrina was / is as close as the
.
Please don’t think that a few years and a couple of band aids will make the wounds of Hurricane Katrina go away. Stop fooling yourselves and wake up to the devastation that has occurred. The fact that many have not wanted to or been able to return to their homes and original lives speaks volumes of the intensity of the tragedy that occurred. The hurricane disaster still goes on.
We in the
We want to see a quick fix to the death and sorrow and desperately want the happy sounds of Dixieland bands after the trip to the cemetery to burry the
Perhaps the storm known as Hurricane Katrina has long since blown past but the REAL hurricane disaster is the day in and day out living in the aftermath and initial experiences of the long d-r-a-w-n o-u-t p-r-o-c-e-s-s of recovery. If you had to stop for a second to slow down to read those dashed out words of the description that is the tiniest of experience of what it is like to have to slow down, struggling to even try to figure out the simplest of things in everything you do to even attempt to start take the fist halting steps in the painful hurricane recovery. Even a drawn out complex sentence is unwelcome in our fast paced society today.
Ask those in
No wonder the crime rate and violence is intensifying exponentially in the communities of the Katrina region. It is no surprise that
There is a hurricane Katrina cancer that eats away at the entity of those who are struggling to recover. Unless we stop the band aid affect of quick fix emotional stuff and think it is all better and start the process of living through the honest and very real grief process, then the suicides and the homicides, the substance abuse, child/spouse/partner abuse and all the rest if the social ills will not stop. It will only get worse.
It is an insult to all concerned to even dare to consider the experience of a time specific tragedy of a rape or mugging and that of a mass fatality of a hurricane that is still on-going 2 years later. One was foisted by vicious, controlling human action by the choice of the perpetrator on an innocent victim, the other by a vicious non-controllable action by nature itself, compounded by human lack of action, inappropriate reaction and lack of serious preoperational action by society as a whole.
The good news from the study is that we can learn from the mass fatality tragedies of human and property loss and begin to learn what it really means to be present in through and with those that travel the journey from bereavement to mourning to grief to someday perhaps the ongoing process of recovery. If we as a society are not willing to be in active and full presence with our sisters and brothers in that painful process than none of us will recover in a healthy manner. If we do not know the difference between mourning, bereavement and grief then we have much to learn and we start by knowing that each means and how to live in the presence of each. For you see it is not only those who are Katrina affected individuals that must learn these things, it is all of us, for no one is an island – the bell tolls for all of us.
COMMENTS WELCOMED!Are you or have you been in a hurricane disaster? Do you know someone who is recovering or has been affected by a hurricane in the past?
Please share your thoughts and stories here on this blog.
All I ask is that everyone be respectful and sensitive of each other and that identifying information about a person who is not the author be limited to protect their privacy.
Pease, Blessings & Be Safe!
Terrie
Web Site: http://www.trainforahurricane.com/
Web Site http://trainforahurricane.blogspot.com/
Dr. Terrie Modesto, Critical Incident Thanatologist
She is an international expert in dying, death, loss and critical incident individual and community disaster preparation and response, with over 60 courses, books and training manuals to her credit. She has 20+ years experience in assisting those in need. Dr. Modesto is available for consultations, lectures media interviews.
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Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report
Coverage & Access | Survivors of Hurricane Katrina Experience Psychological Stress, Survey Finds
[Sep 24, 2007]
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=47699
The percentage of New Orleans residents reporting signs of severe mental illness increased from 11% to 14% between March 2006 and this summer, compared with about 6% before Hurricane Katrina hit more than two years ago, according to a recent Harvard Medical School survey, the Washington Post reports. The survey also found that the percentage of people in
According to the Post, "it is not Hurricane Katrina itself but the persistent frustrations of the delayed recovery that are exacting a high psychological toll of people who never before had such troubles," psychiatrists say. Calls to mental health hot lines in the area surged after the hurricane and have remained high, according to organizers. In addition, area psychiatrists are overbooked because of a heightened demand.
Ronald Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard and leader of the study, said, "It's really stunning in juxtaposition to what these kinds of surveys have shown after other disasters, or after people have been raped or mugged." Typically, "people have a lot of trouble the first night and the first month afterward. Then you see a lot of improvement," he said. However, with the rebuilding process in
Daphne Glindmeyer, a New Orleans psychiatrist and president of the Louisiana Psychiatric Medical Association, said, "There's more depression, more financial problems, more marital conflict, more thoughts of suicide," adding, "And a lot of it is in people who never had any trouble before" (Whoriskey, Washington Post, 9/23).
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