14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new set of investigations, it would appear that Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath caused a lot of negative and serious emotional disturbances in children living in the affected areas. The atmospheric event was one of the worst natural disasters to have ever stricken the United States, and many people were caught off-guard by this, in spite of the warnings that the authorities issued. The new work has been conducted by a panel of experts, whose sole purpose has been to learn about the extent of the emotional and mental damages that the massive storm caused in residents of New Orleans and other victims.
The group was composed of mental-health professionals, emergency-response experts, and researchers from several universities in the United States, including the Virginia Institute of Technology (Virginia Tech). It discovered severe disturbances in the minds of the children it analyzed during the course of the investigation. The researchers report their full findings in a recent issue of the respected Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Katrina struck the American southeast as a Category 3 storm in August 2005, killing a confirmed 1,836 people, and flooding several large cities.
The research also had the goal of determining the approximate prevalence of serious emotional disturbances (SED) among residents in the affected areas, adults and children included. The prevalence of the conditions was found to be pretty high, at about 14.9 percent, the team reports in the journal entry. Of those numbers, 9.3 percent of youths were found to have SED that were directly attributable to Hurricane Katrina, the investigators also note. Some of the most notable indicators the team scanned for included inappropriate behavior, depression, hyperactivity, eating disorders, fears, phobias, as well as learning difficulties.
“Stress exposure was associated strongly with serious emotional disturbances. More than 20 percent of the youths with high stress exposure had hurricane-related SED. The prevalence of SED among youths exposed to Hurricane Katrina remains high 18 to 27 months after the storm. This suggests a substantial need for mental health treatment resources in the hurricane-affected areas,” Virginia Tech College of Science Psychology Professor Russell Jones, who has also been a member of the research team, says.