9/11 and Hurricane Katrina Disaster Evaluation - Assignment Example

 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina Disaster Evaluation Introduction Throughout American history, there have occurred numerous tragedies and natural disasters ranging from deadly tornadoes, to massive wildfires, to hurricanes, wars and terrorist attacks. However, the 9/11 coordinated multiple attacks were the worst terrorist acts in American history, with nearly 3,000 innocent civilians killed as a result of hijacking of four commercial jetliners (Galea & et tal, 2002). The attacks involved a section of the Pentagon, the New York twin towers comprising the World Trade Center, and the deaths of the jetliner passengers including the terrorist themselves following their crash on a Pennsylvania field. Conversely, Hurricane Katrina along the gulf coast in 2005 resulted in one of the worst ever natural disaster in US history, and it clearly exposed unpreparedness of both federal and state government for a tragedy which was extensively forecasted. Hurricane Katrina became the most massive and devastating natural disaster in US as it affected almost 92,000 square miles, and over 1000 citizens were killed with tens of thousands being left without homes and basic supplies (Adeola, 2009). Even though the hurricane changed into a sequence of interconnected predicaments, the failure of man-made levees exposed New Orleans to a sequence of cascading and ruthless flooding, and which was aggravated by critical evacuation difficulties, violence and widespread lawlessness. Beyond physical devastation, both 9/11 terrorist attacks and hurricane Katrina resulted in high levels of physical and mental health problems among survivors. These two disasters are a perfect example of how human tendencies have extensive implications in both natural and manmade disasters, particularly the habit of downplaying some risks and overreacting to others. The ensuing psychological symptoms and negative social outcomes were enormous in both disasters given that grief, anger, depression, and hopelessness become more prevalent. Hence, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the 9/11 terror attacks and Hurricane Katrina psychosocial symptoms and mental-health effects among the survivors. Discussion Psychological Symptoms Survivors of the 9/11 attacks and hurricane Katrina have been found to undergo a wide variety of mental health troubles encompassing PTSD, anxiety, unsociable behaviors like domestic violence, and depression. It is clear from most studies conducted on psychological outcomes of 9/11 attacks that most people who were directly or indirectly affected acquired significant posttraumatic psychological distress, as well as the posttraumatic stress disorder (DiGrande & et tal, 2010). At the outset, avoidant individuals affected by the 9/11 attacks reported higher phases of somatization, resentment, coupled with trauma-related avoidance (Schlenger & et tal, 2002). In a study conducted by DiGrande & et tal, majority of the 9/11 survivors surveyed experienced immediate and lasting posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, with only 4.4% having no signs of the symptoms (2010). The survivors fear factors varied from disaster-specific events, like observing planes to coming across sirens or loud noises. They normally associated such events to the attacks experiences, and as such, many of the survivors still experienced multiple but interrelated posttraumatic stress symptoms two to three years even after the disaster. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder which was a common anxiety disorder after the terror attacks, took place in people who experienced direct danger of death from the attacks, particularly those who observed death or even observed serious injuries of others. Most of them reported a feeling of horror and deep helplessness when responding to the disaster events. Emotional reactions included transitory feelings of terror, shock, grief, anger, resentment, blame, defenselessness and disconnection from the significant others within their lives (Galea & et tal, 2002). Secondly, the victims experienced cognitive reactions arising from fear. This included confusion, uncertainty, disorientation, complicatedness in concentrating, self-blame and more so unwanted reminiscences of the events (Galea & et tal, 2002). The most prevalent indicators included hyper arousal, hyper vigilance, in addition to jumpy symptoms or a sense of being easily startled. The victims attributed such indicators to the witnessing of horror, experience of sustained injuries, exposure to dust cloud, and late evacuation after the airplane impact. Survivors having the highest exposure load experienced the most terrible mental health conditions. Such victims are reported to have very elevated exposure levels, mainly due to being scared that they will be killed, and this was made worse due to their forced relocation and experience of financial difficulties (DiGrande & et tal, 2010). Thirdly, Generalized Anxiety Disorder also became a common psychological symptom mainly evident by unrelenting and excessive worry plus anxiety regarding their daily lives or routine activities (Schuster & et tal, 2001). This also encompassed complicatedness when it comes to concentrating, feelings of jumpiness, excessive sweating, strong senses of lightheadedness and trembling. Others had strong emotional plus cognitive responses followed with repeated thoughts, flashback as well as nightmares and their daily basis functions became significantly impaired due to the acute-stress disorder. The other mental disorder arising from 9/11 attacks was depression. This was more so for those people who were exposed directly to the WTC attacks, especially those involved in search, rescue and recovery attempts (Schlenger & et tal, 2002).  Hence, the depression became a disabling condition which impacted various aspects of their lives, with the most common symptoms comprising extreme sadness, incapability to enjoy life and things, regret, helplessness, despair, difficulty in sleeping and concentrating. However, the most common cases involved loss of desire for food, together with suicidal thoughts along with strong thoughts of death (Schuster & et tal, 2001). On the other hand, victims of hurricane Katrina experienced chronic but long term PTSD symptoms, and which can be attributed to the fact that the hurricane totally upended the survivors lives (Rhodes & et tal, 2010). Particularly, most of the victims are now living in totally new communities even as they have been dislocated from their families and friends and which then makes the entire fabric of their lives to shift dramatically. The hurricane Katrina stressors included death of loved ones, personal victimization, lack of social-support, victimization of their loved ones, income loss, physical injuries and severe home damage. The victims experienced anxiety and depression and which was evident by their interpersonal reactions such as distrust, petulance, being judgmental, feeling of withdrawal, and a strong sense of abandonment and rejection (Adeola, 2009). Apart from the trauma unleashed by Katrina, the authorities slow reaction and general lawlessness later made worse with lethargic recovery efforts and untimely resettlement and compensation, created high levels of socio-psychological predicaments. Hence, most adult victims of hurricane Katrina experienced PTSD symptoms which persisted to not impairing their day by day functioning, but also affecting their cognitive processing and social relationships. The PTSD symptoms most common included emotional numbness, disinterest to other people, hyper-vigilance and intrusion of their memories related to hurricane events into their daily lives. As such, the victims struggled to shun away cues that were evocative of the tragedy, and even some went on to experience tremendous daily occurrence panic, terror and aggression when confronted openly with abrupt reminders and recollections of the disaster. In children, this was evident through anger, resentment, as well as engagement in risky and anti-social behaviors like drugs (Wang & et tal, 2008). Thirdly, General Anxiety Disorder increased the occurrences of suicide tendencies among the survivors. given that hurricane Katrina was a ruthless environmental insult on the people with a combination of acute stressors, episodic stressors and chronic stressors, the victims became extremely vulnerable in experiencing anxiety, restlessness, sleeplessness, and fear. Hence, such stressors resulted in elevated levels of anxiety (Adeola, 2009). In a study done by Wang & et tal (2008), victims of hurricane Katrina experienced pre-existing anxiety resulting from stressful circumstances. This is because in the long term they faced circumstances threatening and in most cases diminished their recovery resources, especially social, health resources and economic resources. In children, anxiety was manifested through numbness, a sense of shame, sadness, loss of trust, and overstated euphoria evident in their academic decline coupled with refusal to attend school. Also, most of the adult survivors experience normal stress responses for several months or even weeks due to acute stress disorder. This was manifested through strong feelings of grief, detachment, uncertainty, lack of sensation and sometimes disorientation (Wang & ettal, 2008). Resources Available To Treat and Assist Victims Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Office for Victims of Crime worked with local communities in trying to deal with rising psychological health issues. The agency used other administrator agencies like the New York State Psychiatric Institute to ease mental-health counseling in both primary and secondary 9/11 victims (Schlenger & ettal, 2002). This was through contracting for personal counseling whereby the states harmonized and scheduled assistance groups in aiding victims to handle their grief, blame, and repressed emotions. For instance, New York authorities developed a Call Cen­ter Resource Guide which was manned by customer service representatives including short-term agency staff (Galea & ettal, 2002). Non-governmental organizations such as the Disaster Psychiatry Outreach offered expertise and volunteer psychiatrists. These included offering immediate mental health services in coordination with government agencies and other private charitable entities. They also offered referral mechanisms comprising emergency mental-health interventions. American Red Cross, Christian religious organizations and FEMA supported Crisis Counseling Program for hurricane Katrina survivors (Wang & ettal, 2008). The initiatives served children, teens, family units, as well as lonely adults. For instance, Skills in Psychological Recovery educated all of these groups on every skills entailing dealing with becoming more resilient through trained but supervised emergency counselors. Focus was on problem-solving, planning more positive and consequential activities, handling of stress and negative responses through engagement in helpful thinking, in addition to shaping of strong social connections. FEMA also designed trauma treatment initiatives through a program referred to as Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Post-disaster Distress commonly referred to as CBT-PD (Rhodes & et tal, 2010). The survivors were educated regarding their psychological symptoms, particularly on how to modify their manner of thinking to be more constructive and useful. This was through acquiring techniques of managing anxiety while engaging in satisfying activities. The American Red Cross applied moderately support-seeking approaches in dealing with both tragedies trauma. Multiple-family group strategies were one of the key approaches for assisting the families to cope with the two tragedies trauma. However, they did not use more emotionally-focused approaches and this made many of the victims to apply distancing strategies. How the Trauma from These Disasters Have Affected Children Children seem to have developed lower risk for psychological disorder symptoms like PTSD compared to adults after 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, those children diagnosed with PTSD appeared withdrawn and not quite sure of what was happening as they were quieter than normal (Galea & ettal, 2002). Fears arising from loud noises especially sudden ones persisted for an extensive period. Others had unusually high phases of motor activities or otherwise irritability, as they were extremely distractible. For example, having difficulties in staying in a single location for more than a short period, however, such behaviors implied that the children were absorbing the attacks events and then responding in age-consistent manners. For instance, most elementary school aged children exposed to the traumatic events of 9/11 experienced time distortion and omen development (Schuster & et tal, 2001). Time skew or distortion is the way the children tend to mis-sequence the trauma connected events, particularly when recalling the event memories. Omen development is the belief the children formed that warning indications existed that forecasted the trauma. Hence, the children often deem that when they become alert sufficiently, they will identify warning signs and then steer clear of future traumas. This was evident in their posttraumatic reenactment through school play, their drawings and verbalization. The posttraumatic play involved the literal depiction of 9/11 traumas through compulsive replication of various aspect of 9/11 trauma without relieving their anxiety (DiGrande & ettal, 2010). This was evident through some of the children increasing use of shooting games and carrying of weapons. Even though many children directly observed traumatic events such as burning buildings, collapsing of towers or rising smoke cloud few of them seemed to be undergoing psychological symptoms. Those few experienced symptoms like increased arousal or re-experiencing of the events even as parents and teachers took measures to protect them from observing images which could have been upsetting or disturbing. On the other hand, hurricane Katrina exposed children to traumatic events like wading precariously through flood-waters, violence, and separation from their family members, sexual assaults and observation of dead bodies (Adeola, 2009). The emotional reactions of most children after the disaster was based on an expression of terror, and such fears were depicted in different ways based on varying facets of the tragedy. The fear centered on being separated from family, or caregivers, homes as well as the broad chaos of the scenario, such as observing unusual reactions of their parents. Many of the children later experienced a huge amount of stress, especially after observing a family member and friends wounded, injured or raped through ensuing violence or killed. Stress exposure in such children was strongly associated with severe emotional turmoil’s. Hence, over 20 percent of the youths affected by Hurricane Katrina had high stress exposure (Wang & ettal, 2008). Such experiences of stress resulted in many of them to acquire relentless symptoms of depression. The children also experienced strong feelings of sadness, nervousness, and difficulty in concentrating or sleeping. Thus, irrational feeling of guilt, mostly due to hunger affected the children to a greater deal and this normally triggers trauma memories as the children often displays a sense of numbness. Furthermore, they tried to steer clear of feelings or thoughts associated with the tragedy, and in the end, they became fearful with mood swings as well as constant nightmares. The very young children increasingly developed a character of clinginess to their parents or caretakers, due to the fear of being separated from them. Such reactions were often coupled with anxiety and generalized fear along with continued sleeping difficulties (Rhodes & et tal, 2010). Media Role These two disasters saw various sources of information being given out from the media, and this frequently created confusing and sometimes conflicting information that made people to find it hard to resolve. Following live coverage of the disasters, particularly live streaming and people calling to provide details of the events under voices of despair, anger and panic, the media created circumstances of shock linked with docility, unsettled thinking, in addition to broader insensitivity to prompts within the immediate background. When it comes to Hurricane Katrina, the media did not just concentrate on the overwhelming loss of lives, but also bleaker news regarding people attacking each other, rather than banding collectively to survive the tragedy (Adeola, 2009). In particular, the increasing reports of killings, rape, and general violence increased the victims’ deindividuation of their frustration (Rhodes & et tal, 2010). Therefore, the negativity of the disaster made the survivors to feel increasingly not in control over any outcome, and this resulted in a sequence of negative psychological reactions, such as thrashing of motivation and depression. Based on one national survey following the 9/11 attacks, most of those interviewed reported watching almost over eight hours of television images regarding the attacks (Schuster & et tal, 2001). Furthermore, majority of those interviewed reported having more considerable stress reactions. Therefore, when adults find that they feel anxious and stressed out after observing traumatic news program, it was important that they limit their amount and form of media coverage. They can engage in reading newspapers instead of watching television while talking with others regarding the attack as a way of collecting and comprehending the information. When it comes to children, it was preferable for them to watch such news reports with their parents while engaging and encouraging them to ask questions, so as to avoid irrational fears arising from misunderstandings of news reports. The parent should have then redirected their children attention to other dynamic and upbeat activities, instead of allowing them to watch too much of the media reports. Long Term Affects and Coping Strategies While others experienced temporal emotional wounds others experienced permanent emotional and psychological scars. This then destroyed their marriage, work functions and social relationships. The psychological harm persisted for weeks and even months coupled with physical effects. When it comes to coping with the psychological symptoms rescues workers of both tragedies worked through their problems mostly via counseling. Counseling was conducted under group or single person counseling. However, group counseling was more prevalent as it encompassed the entire family or community (Adeola, 2009, Schuster & et tal, 2001). The talk-about-it strategy and group therapy proved to be decisive in dealing with the survivors psychological symptoms, such that it helped them to release everything via cognitive psychotherapy. This proved to be successful since it focused on the stressful circumstances which created the psychological illness symptoms and then educating the survivors how to monitor stress so as to overcome them. Notably, children survivors of 9/11 attacks were treated using Art therapy which then assisted them in alleviating anxiety by making them to observe tangible images of their disorder (DiGrande & ettal, 2010). For instance, drawing pictures, coloring together with images lightened up their feelings and which offered useful information regarding buried memories and suppressed feelings of the attacks. Psychological symptoms improvements for victims of 9/11 terror attacks involved relaxation therapies such as reflection, self hypnosis as well as biofeedback. This then helped the victims to calm down while easing their mind (Schuster & et tal, 2001). Conclusion This paper has evaluated both the 9/11 terror attacks and Hurricane Katrina psychosocial symptoms and mental-health effects among the survivors. Many victims of both disasters cope and handled their predicaments differently. The most common psychological symptoms reported included fear of both immediate and long term future, sleeplessness, anger, anxiety, as well as depression. Even though children and adults affected by both disasters experienced continual feelings of hopelessness and sadness, victims of hurricane Katrina reported far much extensive psychological symptoms due to despair coupled with stress-related ill health and depression arising from the sense of neglect and abandonment compared to 9/11, whereby the nation came as one immediately after the disaster and offered help and comfort. When it comes to children most of them were reported to be experiencing hyper-activity, withdrawal and a sense of being subdued. One of the solution commonly used in overcoming the psychological symptoms after the 9/11 terror attacks included facilitation of victims to perform familiar routines. This then brought out a sense of calm and self control. It was also useful that the concerned parties reopened childhood centers while facilitating parents to return to work sooner so as to re-establish their communities. However, a public health screening strategy ought to be developed and which should have referred to the victims longing for normalcy. This should have been met by reestablishing routines, especially the simple ones. In terms of Hurricane Katrina, psychological improvements can be attributed to speedy reconstruction of schools, communities and compassionate interactions between people and their children in schools. This should have quickly helped the survivors to ease their trauma level while shaping a normal living setting within supportive and compassionate environments. References Adeola, F. O. (2009). Mental Health & Psychosocial Distress Sequelae of Katrina:An Empirical Study of Survivors. Human Ecology Review , 16 (2), 195-210. DiGrande, L., & ettal. (2010). Long-term Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Among 3,271 Civilian Survivors of the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks on the World Trade Center. Am. J. Epidemiol , 173 (3), 273-283. Galea, S., & ettal. (2002). Psychological sequelae of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. New England Journal of Medicine , 346, 982–987. Rhodes, J., & ettal. (2010). The Impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Mental and Physical Health of Low-Income Parents in New Orleans. Am J Orthopsychiatry , 80 (2), 237–247. Schlenger, W. E., & ettal. (2002). Psychological reactions to terrorist attacks: findings from the National Study of Americans’ Reactions to September 11. JAMA , 288 (5), 581-588. Schuster, M. A., & ettal. (2001). A National Survey of stress reactions after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. New England Journal Medicine , 345, 1507-1512. Wang, P. S., & ettal. (2008). Disruption of existing mental health treatments and failure to initiate new treatment after Hurricane Katrina. 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