The article's main focus is on the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and it's inhabiants. It follows the city through the aftermath of the storm, analzying the rebuilding efforts that were never truly seen to completeion. They describe the goverments' lack luster efforts to help the displaced survivors and thus their continued feeling of displacement by survivors.
Google scholars had this article referenced 52 times. Many of these articles are in refernce to major disasters and the recovery of those areas from said disasters.
They used other studies done, interviews they conducted, and greater research on the storms to form their arguement for seperate mental health disorder due to the traumatic events of disasters.
Vincanne Adams - Former director of Medical Anthropology with UC Berkeley.
Diana English - Assistant Professor at Stanford Hospital and Clinics.
Taslim van Hattum - Director of Behavioral Health Integration for the Louisiana Public Health Institute. Research focuses on public health.
Katrina, being that astronomical disaster that it was, has a response factor on a whole new level. The article touches on the response both immediately after and in a longer term context. It touches upon the aid provided by relief agencies throughout and the difficulties faced by those organizations due to scarcity and over demand of recourses.
"(Survivors) told us that they were experiencing ongoing “displacement” in the sense that their lives had not returned to normal, even though they were back in their “place of residence.”
"Depression and anxiety disorders were pervasive. Many residents had regular nightmares of waking up in water. They talked about recurring “breakdowns” in which they became overcome with emotion and physically collapsed. A 2007 study showed that 20 percent of New Orleans residents were categorized as having a Katrina-related serious mental illness, and 19 percent showed signs of minimal to mild mental illness (Sastry and VanLandingham 2008; Thomas 2008)."
"Margot, an elderly woman still living in a FEMA trailer next to her destroyed and as yet unrebuilt home, described the problem: 'I haven’t had a mail box in three years, OK. I mean symbolically that’s it right now. I don’t even have a mailbox. You know, if you want to put it in one sentence. I am just tired of not having a mailbox, ya know, because I don’t know where I live.' "
Mental health and how a community can handle the aftermath with more than physical support.
PTSD and it's effects upon life of an individual.
FEMA Trailers
The article uses personal anecdotes from individuals that were there during Katrina and data obtained from the NIH and FEMA.
They use aggregated interviews wherein all or many of the survivors repeat the same issues with long term effects of the disaster.
They also study the socioeconomic longterm effects of the disaster by comparing New Orleans years later to the past, showing how permanent an effect the storm had despite eventual recovery.
They also used sociological surveys that showed widespread mental health disorders that developed throughout the survivor population in greater frequency than that of the normal population due to the events that occured.
Firstly, the bibliography is incrediable thorough and comprehensive. There appears to have been a great deal of research into many aspects of the disaster by these researchers. There were a lot of news articles referenced within the bibliography to captures real events that happened in order to apply those to the greater concept. There were also many anthrological and sociological articles on disasters and their effects within the bibliography, which had been referenced frequently too,