According to the UPI wire, a report has been published detailing how mental health services for children in the post-Katrina gulf region are not meeting standards. Although it appears that kids with anxiety and post-traumatic stress problems are able to attend school and continue on with their lives, significant issues linger, without much help.
Many of the students have nightmares, are hyper-vigilant, easily startled, irritable, depressed or want to avoid things that remind them of the trauma, which can include the loss of family, pets and their homes, the study reported in the Psychiatric Services.
“Mental health responses were good during the early part of the crisis, but most schools were not able to sustain their efforts,” Jaycox said in a statement.
Although it is great to see that the initial push of services for kids affected by the hurricane was successful at getting people back to their lives, it is troubling to think that a generation of children will have lingering psychological problems due to the disaster. Perhaps some of that is inevitable, and the same could be said for the staff burnout and difficulty accessing services, but there must be some solutions. Any ideas out there?
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One Comment to
“Post-Katrina Mental Health Services”
I think the study exploring the wane of mental health services in Katrina kids is a wake up call to the mental health care community. Just because media coverage of victims has subsided does not mean that mental health services available to the victims can subside as well. I think you make a good point in your post by saying that “it is troubling to think that a generation of children will have lingering psychological problems due to the disaster.” But the lingering problems are not entirely inevitable. With proper mental health services, the children will be able to overcome their traumatic experiences. That is why it is important to keep funding mental health services in the affected regions. This led me to wonder whether FEMA is still awarding grants to fund mental health care treatment. Most likely it is not, especially not as much as it did in August 2006 with its $34 million dollar contribution. With continued funding, programs can be created to train new psychologist to assist those in who are feeling burnt out. These psychologists should also be trained in multicultural psychology in order to appropriately deal with the barriers to treatment, such as the social stigma of mental illness, cultural mistrust, and availability issues.
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 4 Nov 2007
