By Catherine Cuellar, KERA 90.1 Reporter
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-495445.mp3
Dallas, TX –
Catherine Cuellar: Denise Leonard lived her whole life in New Orleans before Katrina, but is now in Duncanville with her husband, three of their four children, her mother, and her aunt. She and her husband have been unable to find jobs, so they help other hurricane survivors they know by driving their kids to school. The time she spends online and on the phone with FEMA and insurance companies is comparable to a part-time job. There is only one way she can describe the life she knew in New Orleans compared to the life she has now.
Denise Leonard, Katrina survivor: Have you ever put together a thousand piece puzzle? When you get the box, the top of the box, it shows you how the puzzle is going to look when it's finished. When you dump out all the pieces, you have a picture in your mind of how these pieces are going to come together. You don't know where each piece goes yet, but you do have an idea. And slowly but surely you put those pieces together to get a picture. We don't have the picture. We don't know how these pieces go together. We're getting pieces of the puzzle, but we have no idea where they go, and exactly when they come together.
Cuellar: As she sits with her husband, mother, and aunt around the breakfast table, eating donuts and drinking coffee, they wipe away tears as they describe the hassles they've encountered as they start life over from scratch. Tyrone Leonard is concerned about his wife's well-being.
Leonard: What I notice is crying, her blood pressure's been up high, and that's the mental part that's not been addressed, and that's affecting her life. She needs help in that area. I don't know. We all may need help in that area because we don't know exactly what's going on inwardly.
Cuellar: Those are the issues that the Mental Health Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Evacuees in Dallas County was formed to address. For months, city staff, non-profit organizations, mental health professionals, and members of the faith community have met on a weekly basis. John Dornheim, who is the task force outreach chair, says mental health problems occurred in waves.
John Dornheim: Some people who had to swim to shore to get rescued and were in the Superdome, they suffered some multiple traumatic events that they would be feeling it immediately. Then people got in their cars and drove here, settled down, and a couple weeks later they saw the pictures and saw what happened to their house, and then it hit them. Then people who took it all in stride and thought they needed to be strong for their families and all of a sudden one day they woke up and thought, 'My life is not what I want it to be. I'm not where I want to be where I live, or anything,' and it can be more potent that way.
Cuellar: The task force got funding from the Meadows Foundation for social workers to conduct a survey of evacuees in Dallas County. Most of them are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, according to Dr. Peter Polatin, the task force co-director.
Dr. Peter Polatin: What we are finding is that well over 50 percent of interviewees have one or both of these problems, which is far higher than we expected. From prior studies after the Oklahoma City after 9/11 in New York, we expected maybe 10, 15 percent.
Cuellar: Dallas County must now care for an unprecedented number of people suffering from mental illness. Michael Johnson, a social worker from New Orleans who is heading up the survey of Katrina survivors, says the affected population doesn't usually address mental health in a clinical way.
Michael Johnson, social worker: One of the things that's important to understand about the demographics of New Orleans, it's a great city and a city that consists of a lot of small and close-knit communities and those community depended largely on their social resources more so than their economic resources. We, the African-American community is one who is faith-based, and the city of New Orleans, not just the African-American community but New Orleans both African-American and non-African-American, largely Catholic and Baptist and generally rely heavily on their churches as it relates to addressing mental health needs or concerns that they have, both with themselves or within the family.
Cuellar: The loss of neighborhoods, separation from family, and unfamiliarity with churches has compounded stress and trauma for many evacuees. Polatin says the effects of untreated mental illness vary greatly.
Polatin: First of all, kids who are affected by emotional distress issues tend to not do well in school. There's increased truancy. There are acting out behaviors, poor performance in schools for the children and adolescents who may be exposed.
Cuellar: So the task force has worked with school counselors, especially in the Dallas and Richardson ISDs where many evacuees are enrolled. Denise Leonard's six-year-old daughter has benefited from counseling through Alexander Elementary in Duncanville.
Denise Leonard: She has a counselor there that has been meeting with the kids from New Orleans and the surrounding areas She was meeting with them every week, then she started meeting with them every other week, to help them make the adjustment and not focus so much on that. That was really awesome. That helped a lot, and we try to keep things almost as normal as possible, especially for them.
Cuellar: For adults, untreated mental illness causes other problems, Polatin says.
Polatin: Adults tend to be less productive. They can't concentrate. They can't fall asleep. They've got other things on their mind so you see loss of productivity in the workplace. Increased absenteeism. Possible increased termination for poor performance. Then you see increased family violence. People suffering from mental illness are emotionally up and down and they may again act out against family members, kids, spouses. You see an increase in alcohol abuse, substance abuse. As a result of these things, you may see increases in street crime. So there are a lot of secondary effects of untreated mental illness in general, and very specific to Katrina.
Cuellar: To help, task force members call on their own contacts at schools, in the business community, through churches, and even among private practice counselors. Task force member Dave Hogan, who manages the city of Dallas crisis intervention unit, says that for Katrina survivors, this approach is unique.
Dave Hogan, Dallas Crisis Intervention: From what we can tell, it looks like Dallas' effort has been a bit more proactive than some of the other cities, particularly in the mental health arena.
Cuellar: The task force has initiated care through many avenues. Denise Leonard was among the evacuees to get group counseling and referrals in her new church, where a member volunteered her services.
Leonard: She's a member of Concord, but she's a clinical counselor and awhile back did a program called Let's Talk, for hurricane Katrina evacuees, just to talk about those things and give us handouts and let us know that certain things are natural and normal responses, and to let us know that a certain thing might just pop up all of a sudden and you'll be snapping and cracking and won't understand. There are places for you to get assistance.
Cuellar: The work of the task force also has benefits for the city going forward, Hogan says.
Hogan: What we're going to do is transition from this disaster, particularly in the mental health response to it, Katrina Mental Health services, into a disaster mental health task force so we'll be ready for, basically the next natural disaster or terrorist event.
Cuellar: So far Hogan's team has surveyed more than 150 families of Katrina survivors, and they hope to reach almost 800 families that were placed in housing through Project Exodus, the city of Dallas partnership with the faith-based and business communities. They hope to get evacuees into the task force's growing pipeline of service providers through a Katrina referral and information hotline they have established at 214-823-9634. Meanwhile, the task force is meeting weekly to find resources for all the evacuees with mental health problems.
For KERA 90.1, I'm Catherine Cuellar.
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