According to a recent article in the New York Times children in both Louisiana and Mississippi are in crisis over two years after Katrina.
At least 46,600 children along the Gulf Coast are still struggling with mental health problems and other serious aftereffects of 2005 hurricanes, according to a new study by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the Children’s Health Fund.
More below the fold....
The mental anguish suffered by these traumatized children is truly spirit-shredding to think about, especially when one takes into account how the government has been neglecting these children, their families and the communities they live in, and the mainstream media have been silent on this matter. Both BushCo and the MSM have in effect been practicing child abuse against these agonized children by ignoring their plight. Had this been going on someplace like New York this would be a major headline, but since it's Louisiana and Mississippi, Brian Williams and the rest of them just don't seem to care.
But these are real problems affecting real Americans, unlike the baseball steroids scandal and other things the mainstream media have been obsessed with lately. As the Times article quoted above continues:
They are children like Nicole D. Riley’s daughter Isis, who is about to turn 4. Her family left New Orleans the day before Hurricane Katrina and moved five times over a short period before ending up in the large government-operated trailer park in Baker, La. All those moves "really didn’t sit well with her," Ms. Riley said of her daughter. "When we got out here to the park, she was out of control, out of hand. She was not like that before the storm."
Although the uncontrollable temper tantrums have stopped, Ms. Riley said in a telephone interview, Isis remains worrisomely moody, and all three of her children have been suffering from rashes. And they are going to have to move again. The government plans to close the trailer park next spring, and Ms. Riley and her fiancé are already looking for a new place to live.
Doctors treating Isis and other children "have been reporting just tremendous problems, especially the mental health providers," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of the Children’s Health Fund and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia. "We are alarmed at the continuing downward trend, the longer the state of limbo continues."
Says Dr. Irwin Redliner
This may be the most severe acute crisis affecting American children since the 1950s". He continued, "It's been two and a half years since the Hurricanes devastated the Gulf Coast region, and the level of uncertainty among tens of thousands of families who still do not have adequate permanent housing for families has manifested itself in the children, with a distressing rise of mental health and medical issues, as well as a drop in academic performance that can have painful and permanent consequences. In fact, these families would be officially recognized as'Internally Displaced Persons' by international humanitarian organizations.
And according to Psychiatry Online
Children were especially hard hit by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, traumatized by loss of their homes and communities and separation from families and friends, said Joy Osofsky, Ph.D., clinical director of Louisiana Spirit.... Louisiana Spirit offers crisis counseling to child and adolescent hurricane survivors in the state.
For children, distress varied with age; their history of trauma and loss; support received from family, school, and community; and by the trauma they experienced directly. All of this was compounded by pre-existing or subsequent poverty.
"These children were resilient if they were supported by their family and community, but those supports were devastated by the storm," said Osofsky. "The old networks of extended families were lost."
And this has been the saddest, most heartwrenching thing for both the young and their parents, especially in New Orleans where prevalent before the storms had been extended families and other supportive social networks, which are now lost now that their members have been scattered to the four winds. Because before the storm the family and social networks had been useful as an outlet where people had been able to vent their frustrations and otherwise hash out what they were going through. Now that they no longer have these relationships--an outlet they need now more than ever since they're in crisis, it's no wonder depression and other mental ills have reached an epidemic level.
Adds New York Times article cited above,
In New Orleans, one of the biggest problems for children is that their extended families are no longer nearby, said David J. Ward, a health policy analyst and founder of the Louisiana Health Services Recovery Council. "The fabric of the family has splintered," Mr. Ward said. "Who is going to take care of the kids after school, or draw them into becoming musicians?"
So this is a difficult situation not only for entire families but could ultimately have a shattering impact on New Orleans' culture because the mechanism for passing on interest in music and other traditions has been broken. Because, sadly, it's not just Louisiana's traumatized children who are afflicted by the emotional problems of having gone through the storm and lost so much including people they know and familiar surroundings. Even more distressing is the fact that their agonized parents who themselves are grappling not only with their own traumas and the same losses and the frustrations of trying to put their families' lives back together, are unable to comfort their children. Because these parents themselves are beset by depression, PTSD and other mental or physical ills. For Louisiana has been tortured by en epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other mental ills with insufficient resources to ease the pain of the suffering.
Aside from the obvious need for more and better mental health services, another thing that would benefit these tormented children and their families would be a more stable situation. For example, by having a decent, affordable home instead of being totally homeless or having to live in a FEMA trailer.
But I'm not sanguine about these prospects--and the problem is the lack of attention to the post-Katrina situation not only by the MSM but also by politicians--and I'm talking not only GOP members but most Democrats--like two out of the three running for the presidential nomination. It does not bode well for New Orleans' and the rest of the storm zone's recovery getting the full attention it deserves if both Obama and Clinton keep this issue "below the fold" on their websites when this is obviously an above the fold issue because of what Katrina did not only to Louisiana and Mississippi but the rest of this country. I'm afraid that unless the nominee is Edwards he/she won't do the job of highlighting this issue and most important coming up with a plan with teeth in it, that needs to be done. It makes me very sad to think that for two out of the three Dems, too, New Orleans is low-priority and, like the Rethugs, he/she won't give a damn if New Orleans vanished from the face of the earth.
And then there's the MSM falling down on the job. Believe it or not, Fox News, which most Kossacks can't stand, covered the story I'm going to go into as one of its "Around America" newsbriefs--while "Nightly" said nothing about it. Here's another Open Letter to Brian Williams I'm posting on Daily Nightly.
Dear Brian,
Yesterday something happened that you did not cover although it was far more newsworthy than your headline story of the baseball/steroid scandal. If I want to watch dreck about overpaid, overhyped, overpublicized jocks I'd watch ESPN.
Last night's newscast was your 73rd since you last aired a full report out of New Orleans. Here's what you missed: Demonstrators putting a temporary halt to the demolition of a New Orleans housing project that had been slated for demolition before Katrina.
By the way, Fox News covered this. So your news judgment is worse than Fox News'.
New Orleans' need for affordable housing and the demolitions controversy are major news that needs to be covered. They aren't going away no matter how hard you or your corporate bosses want to keep them swept under the rug because they want to see "disaster capitalism" (per Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine) and BushCo's genocide by inaction succeed in Louisiana.
Then there are the New Orleans schools that merely need fixing up and cleaning up--but won't be, because they won't be needed in the foreseeable future because their neighborhoods aren't coming back. This is about an example: Return to Jean Gordon Elementary
And here's a news tip:
Emergency Declaration
"If it is true that a declaration of emergency enables the authorities to abduct and brutalize citizens with impunity, maybe O'Dyer's secession idea isn't so goofy". This from a column in the TP today and is directly related to the Shock Doctrine. Sounds like O'Dyer was calling the shots on the "jackleg engineers" from the very beginning. Levees.org is having a news conference tomorrow at 10:30 AM at the 17th St. Canal to take on the ACOE and the ASCE. I hope it will be civil.
http://www.nola.com/...
More news for you Brian.
by chigh on Thu Dec 13, 2007 at 03:57:56 PM PST
Again I am calling on "Nightly" to bring back full, regular coverage out of New Orleans and for NBC to reopen its New Orleans bureau. And for NBC to plan a 2008 presidential debate hosted by New Orleans.
Louisiana 1976