Hurricane Katrina

The Washington Post reported Sunday that enduring depression is at a crisis point among residence living in New Orleans. According to the article, “the most thorough survey of the Gulf Coast’s mental health recently showed that while signs of depression and other ills doubled after the hurricane, two years later, those levels have not subsided, they have risen.”

Unlike most traumas, people tend to get better over time but in New Orleans many are living without hope that they’ll find work, that their homes will be restored, or their neighborhoods repaired. The loss is not only devastating but it lingers without any sign of change.

It strikes me that as a country we are now burdened with the task of facing honestly the psychological effects of devastation. Churches and other religious and secular institutions have been going to New Orleans regularly since the devastation hit. This is critical work. But it is equally critical that we pay close attention over the long haul, and without easy solutions, to the effects such disaster will have over the long haul. Just as with the war, those of us who have not faced combat or natural disaster are challenged now more than ever to listen to the pain of those whose lives have been forever changed.