Yes, Ida is not Katrina, and luckily New Orleans did indeed ‘hold the line’ this time. In spite of the infrastructure failure resulting in power and Internet service outage, the levees held and the city did not flood. One can therefore be very grateful that the dire destruction that Katrina wrought on the entire ecosystem of the city in 2005 did not reoccur. However, the internal landscape, the internal psyche of many New Orleanians has been broken by the irony of another devastating hurricane occurring on the anniversary of Katrina. For many New Orleanians, the same harrowing initial thought process of whether to stay and ride out the hurricane or evacuate was triggering, accompanied by the stressors associated with either decision, making it an extremely bittersweet sixteenth Katrina anniversary.

Whereas we are not dealing with literal drowning due to Ida, metaphorically, many New Orleanians are drowning in the reawakened tears of Katrina, worsened by eighteen months of existential angst, fear, anxiety, sadness and anger unleashed by the seemingly unending pandemic now in its fourth surge due to the Delta variant. This series of cascading and compounding shocks have catalytically activated the hypothalamic-pituitary-axis, the trauma survival center in the brain responsible for turning on the “fight, flight or freeze” response. Continued activation of this system without adequate psychosocial buffers, protection and support, or preexisting genetic vulnerability, leaves a person vulnerable to a myriad of trauma-related mental illnesses - depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance use and anxiety disorders. And, whether disaster survivors in New Orleans develop a mental health disorder or not, many are being pushed to the edge of resilience fatigue, grasping to find the strength to get back up after being knocked down one to many times.

FROM KATRINA TO COVID TO IDA, THE CYCLE CONTINUES

The high likelihood of mental distress is not hypothetical or an exercise in academic meandering. Since 2012, we here at the Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies (IWES) have screened over 7000 youth attending New Orleans public schools for signs and symptoms of trauma-based conditions. The data has consistently shown rates of symptoms of PTSD and depression two to three times the national rates, together with alarming rates of exposures to household and community violence, basic needs, worries and fears.

Since the first wave of COVID-19 pushed New Orleans into the national spotlight as an early epicenter for the pandemic, IWES has been looking at the connections between mental health and the long-term impacts of this time. To bring attention to the potential mental health disaster that was unfolding, since the spring of 2020 we have written a white paper, published an academic article[i] and surveyed educators and other essential workers. The survey of 180 essential workers in education (teachers and other support staff) found that 24% endorsed symptoms of moderate to severe anxiety, 26% endorsed symptoms of moderate to severe depression and 23% endorsed symptoms of probable PTSD, which is three to four times higher than national rates pre-COVID [ii]. In every discussion on the best ways to respond to these multiple crises, the trauma and losses of Hurricane Katrina resurfaced.

These series of rolling shocks, worsened by the increasing ferocity of climate change and its concomitant extreme weather events, demand that our public mental health systems adapt and be prepared to deal with the mental health fallout. Public mental health systems can no longer consider the serious and persistently mentally ill (those suffering from mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and chronic addictions) solely their primary population. Individuals with trauma-based disorders must now be considered an emerging primary population, which will require increased resources to: 1) develop disaster plans that include consistent provision of psychological first aid; 2) build capacity for citywide disaster-focused psycho-educational messaging; and, 3) develop a workforce skilled in providing trauma-based care.

CULTURE IS THE REVOLUTION

I was fortunate to participate in two New Orleans cohorts that visited Japan on two occasions post-Katrina. The first was in 2009 to learn about how they handled the disaster after the Miyakejima volcanic eruption in 2000, and the second was to give back and provide healing and soothing after the 2011 tsunami. One takeaway that has lingered with me was the frequent reference to Japanese culture as being ‘a culture of disaster’, based on the islands of Japan having to constantly adapt to frequent disasters over the ages. As a result of being intentionally inclusive of the reality of disasters as a part of their culture, Japanese people were accustomed to frequent pre-disaster drills; centered the needs, especially housing, of those most socio-economically disadvantaged in rescue and recovery efforts; and worked cooperatively with government, NGOs and businesses to address disaster needs.

How therefore could New Orleans, known for her rich Afrocentric cultural expressions, lean into becoming a culture that embraces the necessity of adaptation to cope with and manage the reality of ever growing and increasingly extreme natural disasters? Lest we forget, we are the ones who originally imagined and now continue to maintain the ways in which we organize our current social arrangements. Could we reimagine a society more responsive to the realities we now face? Could we imagine creating a new way of being in which we:

1. include environmental and climate justice in K-12 education;

2. end gentrification and displacement of socio-economically disadvantaged community members and instead implement economic reinvestment policies that rejuvenate communities, putting an end to community trauma so that communities can once again become safe places where people can rest and find solace;

3. support culture bearers, artisans, culture creators and culture sustainers in creating social spaces where individuals can come together and remember and recreate indigenous knowledge, or imagine and create new ways of weathering life’s storms;

4. normalize living more mindfully in the present moment so that we deepen our awareness of specifically how and what our mental processes and physical sensations are registering and telling us about the reality of the external world, and hence how to get our true needs met?

FINAL OBSERVATIONS

Katrina did not end on August 29th, 2005, or soon thereafter. It has lived on very close to the surface of the psyche of New Orleanians through to Hurricane Ida and will live on long past Ida and through the pandemic if quality mental health care is not prioritized. And when we speak of mental health care, we recognize it also requires the remedying of other major systemic injustices and the creation of more equitable systems, such as the enactment of housing fairness and economic justice, known social determinants of mental and physical health. For the 60% of the New Orleans population who are African American, the root cause of these inequities dates back to 1619 and must be reckoned with for true healing and thriving to be achieved. For indeed, if New Orleans is going to rebound and flourish through the 21st century, it can no longer afford to be a tale of two cities – the few haves and the many have-nots.

Climate change dictates that we create new norms of centering and managing disasters, not turning away from what seems so unbearable. If nothing else, the pandemic has asked us to stop, look, listen and engage in deep reflection to ascertain that which we can put down and that which we can let go of, individually and collectively. In a listening session during my post-tsunami trip in 2011, a Japanese elder shared the following – “Between life and death, the boundary is very thin. It is a hair-split second; a thin sheet of paper between who lives and who dies.” I posit that the larger existential lesson of this moment, in addition to accepting the reality of our isolation, freedom, and eventual death, is that life is a mystery to be leaned into and lived into fully if we are to find meaning and come closer to the jouissance in our self and with each other; the other side of our current sorrows!

[i] Available from: www.iwesnola.org; also - Shervington D, Richardson L. Mental health framework: coronavirus pandemic in post-Katrina New Orleans. Journal of Injury and Violence Research, May 2020

[ii] Shervington D, Richardson L, Green J. Educators as Essential Workers in the Era of COVID-19: Applying Lessons from Disaster Recovery. Journal of Mental Health Disorders. In print