Topic: Mental Health Crisis Post Katrina 

Here are links to two articles on the Post-Katrina mental health crisis.  The first article is a link to a relatively unpublicized study recently completed by the University of South Mississippi  in conjunction with the Mississippi Department of Education and funded by RAND Gulf Policy Institute.  The study examined the records of 17,000 Mississippi students displaced by Katrina and found persistent mental health problems disproportionately affecting minorities and low-income people.  An excerpt from the news release on the USM site reads:  

Researchers also studied the demographic characteristics of displaced students, who more often were from minority racial/ethnic groups than their non-displaced peers. These students were also more frequently from low-income households than their non-displaced counterparts, and the differences in poverty between these groups pre-existed the storm.  [Dr. Mike] Ward believes it’s important to bridge the gaps between displaced students and their more fortunate counterparts, or else the state risks leaving an unfortunate educational legacy from Katrina. “Just as gaps often exist by race and poverty, gaps exist here between groups of students, one of which is disproportionately minority and poor,” he said. “And closing those gaps needs to be intensified for displaced kids, because they were already in difficult circumstances and the storm compounded that.” 

The second link is to an article on that touches on vicarious trauma stress (also known as secondary or indirect trauma) in mental health workers in New Orleans. I would add that this kind of trauma stress, which arises from working with people who have experienced direct trauma, can affect teachers, community service workers, police, and healthcare workers and has been largely ignored in the aftermath of Katrina.  Neither article addresses the challenge of coping with the unique symptoms and psychological consequences of ethnic group trauma, i.e. the emotional impact people experience when they feel that, above and beyond the natural disaster, they have been victimized because of their ethnicity/race (racial disparities in the rescue and recovery and obstacles to returning home). 

http://www.usm.edu/pr/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1615&Itemid=2

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2008-05-06/healthfeat.php