Post Hurricane Katrina Society Wants To: See No Grief-- Hear No Grief -- Speak No Grief – Feel No Grief
Traumatological loss due to a critical incident disaster does not go way quickly. In fact it is just the opposite. Critical Incident traumatalogical loss also known as critical incident thanostic loss has a snowball affect that builds and gathers speed. It is a dirty snowball of sticks and stones of broken homes, lives, dreams and hopes possibly even bones. It can feel like Dante’s hell for those who MUST live through it.
Additionally there is compounded and complex grief that has not been resolved in the Hurricane Katrina experience. The more complex the grief and compounding of the losses that are experienced individually and collectively, the harder it is to accomplish the tasks of grieving when the world around you is no longer grieving and desperately wants as well as unmercifully expects you to STOP GRIEVING if you are one of those from the Hurricane Katrina experience.
Unrealistic expectations by society and many in the helping profession think that since it has been 2 years or so since the ravishing winds tore through the gulf coast, that grief, pain and suffering should be over with is absolutely outlandish. These hurricane survivors who were so profoundly affected by Hurricane Katrina as still living in the early stages of the graveyard walk to the grave of hurricane destruction. There is little grief resolution to the traumas Hurricane Katrina Survivors experienced, the pain and suffering as well as the wounds that are only getting more complex and more silent in our society because our general society does not want to: see no grief-- hear no grief -- speak no grief – feel no grief.
Society in general does not want to have to contend with the elongated sticky stuff of grief. It is elongated in that critical incident loss does not go away quickly. It is impossible for it to be push away into the dustpan of history.
No disrespect to a rape victim, but a mass critical incident event such a Hurricane Katrina has so many more components. These componets rangefrom the publicity to the dashed hope of recovery to the abandonment that is experienced on top of all the compounded frustrations of trying to rebuild lives that are so shattered in so many ways.
Such scaring events as Hurricane Katrina may not be able to be resolved in a few years; it may take decades and even generations to work through it. Since we have frankly not done even a marginal job of helping post hurricane disaster suppport with the emotional issues of death, loss and non-reconstruction of individual and community lives, I seriously doubt if we will see a the possibility of a full recovery for Hurricane Katrina survivors for a very long time.
Think about it. A rape victim may be able to go to a place that may feel safe for her/him, that is at least familiar to taht person and has things that speak of love and comfort from another time and other circumstances. It may be a pair of slippers, a photograph, the fact that they can take all the precautions they wish to begin the process to feel safer in their own skin and environment.
Now think of the person who has NO slippers, nothing that is familiar that might speak of comfort and there is no door left of their home to lock to feel safer. What is left of their home is marred or destroyed by mud and dirty smelly water. The differences between a rape violation or mugging / robbery is vastly different.
I, in no way want to minimize in any way the terrible experience a person who has been raped or mugged has experienced and the pain of such a recovery journey. It is a ghastly theft of personal sense of safety, personhood and personal dignity from someone else. I stand in awe and admire all those who live through and rebuild their lives in spite of and because of such tragic events.
What I am saying is that in a mass fatality of a macro-regional community trauma, the recovery process is nothing like that which occurs on a personal or even on a family / cohort basis. Hurricane Katrina was / is as close as the US as ever experienced of the traumatic fatality loss associated with the atomic bombs that hit and shattered parts of Japan. Even to this very day the wounds of those traumatic events affect not only the immediate survivors but also the generations present and yet unborn physically, emotionally and spiritually,
Please don’t think that a few years and a couple of band aids emergency shelters and temporary disaster trailers will make the wounds of Hurricane Katrina go away. That is only wishful thinking. Stop fooling yourselves and wake up to the hurricane destruction and disaster devastation that has occurred. The fact that many have not wanted to or been able to return to their homes in hurricane ravaged areas and original lives speaks volumes of the intensity of the tragedy that occurred. The hurricane disaster still goes on!
We in the United States are so death and disaster phobic of the sticky muck of death, grief, sorry and slow hurricane recovery. We are an instantaneous society that wants everything done quickly-- like instant coffee and popcorn out of the microwave. Sorry to pop the delusional bubble of instant gratification and desire for 30 minutes to happy endings on TV sit-coms. That is NOT what is part of REAL LIFE and certainly not the experience of those who are living in the dark night of the soul of traumatic grief and loss.
We want to see a quick fix to the death and sorrow and desperately want the happy sounds of Dixieland bands AFTER the trip to the cemetery to burry the Gulf Coast community of the Hurricane Katrinadays. We want to race our way out the gates of the cemetery. Sorry, but the dirge is still slowly and mournfully walking TOWARDS the grave. We have not had the time and opportunity to place to rest the pain, brokenness and suffering of Hurricane Katrina. That funeral, that mourning, bereavement and disaster recovery will be a very l-o-n-g painful , frustrating process.
Perhaps the wind storm known as Hurricane Katrina has long since blown past but the REAL hurricane disaster is the day in and day out living in the disaster aftermath and initial experiences of the long d-r-a-w-n o-u-t p-r-o-c-e-s-s of recovery.
If you had to stop for a second to slow down to read those dashed out words of the description in the last sentence, that is the tiniest of experience of what it is like to have to slow down, struggling to even try to figure out and make sense of the simplest of things in everything hurricane survivor does to even attempt to start take the fist halting steps in the painful hurricane recovery. Even a drawn out complex sentence like the ones you jsut read are unwelcome in our fast paced society today. Now imagine the drawn out complexities of rebuilding a life in the hurricane recovery process!
Ask those in New York City about their painful trauma recovery after 9-11. It still haunts them and there is only a gaping whole where the two towers use to stand. In the post-Hurricane Katrina region the debris moldy and rotting, unfortunately still stands and still smells. It is a constant reminder of what hapened and what is still needed to be done. The clean-up is still going on. There are still missing bodies and unclaimed bodies at the morgue.
No wonder the Post Hurricane Katrina crime rate and violence is intensifying exponentially in the communities of the Hurricane Katrina region. It is no surprise that New Orleans is such a mecca of killings and violence. People outside the Hurricane karina region are surprised by it, but they shouldn’t be. What happens on the outside expressions in a community such as robbery and violence is only the tip of wound that is infested and deepening within the hearts, minds and lives of those who are living through the Hurricane Katrina experience.
There is a Hurricane Katrina cancer that eats away at the entity of those who are struggling to recover from a hurricane. Unless we stop the ineffective band aid affect of quick fix emotional stuff and think the disaster recovery response is all better and start the process of living through the honest and very real grief process, then the suicides and the homicides, the substance abuse, child/spouse/partner abuse and all the rest if the social ills and destructive behaviors will not stop. It will only get worse.
It is an insult to all concerned to even dare to consider the experience of a time specific tragedy of a rape or mugging and that of a mass fatality of a catastropic hurricane that is still on-going 2 years later. One was foisted by vicious, controlling human action by the choice of the perpetrator on an innocent victim, the other by a vicious non-controllable action by nature itself, compounded by human lack of emergency hurricane preparedness action, inappropriate hurricane response reaction and lack of serious disaster preoperational leadership action by society as a whole.
The good news from the study presented, is that we can learn from the mass fatality disaster tragedies of human and property loss and begin to learn what it really means to be present in through and with those hurricane survivors that travel the journey from bereavement to mourning to grief to someday perhaps the ongoing process of disaster recovery. If we as a society are not willing to be in active and full supportive presence with our sisters and brothers in the painful process disaster recovery than none of us will recover in a healthy manner. If we do not know the difference between mourning, bereavement and grief then then we can cause additional pain and suffering. We as a society have much to learn about the process after a disaster such as a hurricane and we start by knowing what each term means and how we can live individually and collectively live in the presence of each of these components of disaster grief and recovery. For you see it is not only those who are Hurricane Katrina affected individuals that must learn these things, it is all of us, for no one is an island – the bell tolls for all of us.
COMMENTS WELCOMED!
Are you or have you been in a hurricane disaster? Do you know someone who is recovering or has been affected by a hurricane in the past? Please share your thoughts and stories here on this blog. All I ask is that everyone be respectful and sensitive of each other and that identifying information about a person who is not the author be limited to protect their privacy.
Be Safe!
Terrie
Dr. Terrie Modesto, Critical Incident Thanatologist
www.trainforahurricane.com
Survivors of Hurricane Katrina Experience Psychological Stress, Survey Finds
[Sep 24, 2007]
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=47699
The percentage of New Orleans residents reporting signs of severe mental illness increased from 11% to 14% between March 2006 and this summer, compared with about 6% before Hurricane Katrina hit more than two years ago, according to a recent Harvard Medical School survey, the Washington Post reports. The survey also found that the percentage of people in New Orleans who reported suicidal thoughts increased from 3% to 8% between March 2006 and the summer of 2007.
According to the Post, "it is not Hurricane Katrina itself but the persistent frustrations of the delayed recovery that are exacting a high psychological toll of people who never before had such troubles," psychiatrists say. Calls to mental health hot lines in the area surged after the hurricane and have remained high, according to organizers. In addition, area psychiatrists are overbooked because of a heightened demand.
Ronald Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard and leader of the study, said, "It's really stunning in juxtaposition to what these kinds of surveys have shown after other disasters, or after people have been raped or mugged." Typically, "people have a lot of trouble the first night and the first month afterward. Then you see a lot of improvement," he said. However, with the rebuilding process in New Orleans going slowly, residents are "in this stage of where there are a lot of people just kind of giving up," Kessler said.
Daphne Glindmeyer, a New Orleans psychiatrist and president of the Louisiana Psychiatric Medical Association, said, "There's more depression, more financial problems, more marital conflict, more thoughts of suicide," adding, "And a lot of it is in people who never had any trouble before" (Whoriskey, Washington Post, 9/23).
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