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Study Finds Having Been Through Disaster Not All Bad

In 2005, Dr. Katie Cherry, Director of LSU’s Life Course and Aging Center, was studying the healthy aging of 90-year-olds in Baton Rouge. And then Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck.  

Dr. Cherry noticed that nearly all of her 90-year-olds had a house full of evacuees. 

"I heard some phenomenal stories of death, destruction and loss from relatives of the 90-year -olds who had evacuated to Baton Rouge. And I wondered if they had gone back home to rebuild, or what had happened," she says.

She was curious about what it takes to recover from a disaster like that. What factors can make someone resilient? 

 

That question sparked a new study. Five years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, she began studying 219 St. Bernard and Plaquemines parish residents, ages 18 to 91.

 

What she noticed is that -- at any age -- when it comes to protecting mental health after a disaster, it’s the perception of social support that’s important. 

 

"Thinking there's someone that you know and can contact, whether or not you contact them," Cherry explains. Even if they don't reach out, those who believe they have someone to call if they need help tend to do better than those who don't.

 

That perception can help protect against PTSD, depression and generalized anxiety. The prevalence of those mental health challenges was a lot lower than Cherry had anticipated, "given what I knew these people had been through."

 

There’s also an advantage to having experienced trauma before, like Hurricanes Camille or Betsy. 

 

"Among the older adults in our study, many had lost homes previously. So when you're looking at just the older residents in the sample, that prior experience gives them an advantage over the younger participants," she explains.

 

Cherry will pick the study back up in 2016.  She'll contact the participants again, ask them the same questions, and see how they respond ten years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.