We're seeing the pictures on TV reminding us of the physical devastation caused by Katrina. Let's also remember the less visible emotional scars. From USA Today:
A year after Hurricane Katrina scoured the Gulf Coast, the storm still rages in the minds of survivors, who now suffer twice as much severe mental illness as existed in the region before landfall, researchers reported Monday.
Katrina forced 500,000 people to evacuate and carved its initials in a swath of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
The first major attempt to probe survivors' mental status found that about 15% of residents of the counties and parishes struck by the storm, or 200,000 people, have depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and other forms of mental illness, twice as many as before.
