Katrina's toll includes rise in suicide, mental illness

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Katrina's toll includes rise in suicide, mental illness

By Pam Firmin | McClatchy Newspapers


BILOXI, Miss. — The last five years have been a mental health roller coaster for many among the Mississippi Gulf Coast's post-Hurricane Katrina population.

Suicides are up since Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. More people are seeking treatment for substance abuse, therapists say, and post-traumatic stress disorder is on the rebound.

Though suicide numbers were higher in 2004 than in the years immediately after the storm, they have climbed in the years that followed. In Harrison County, the largest county on the Mississippi Coast, the number of people who committed suicide has increased since the storm from 30 in 2005 to 32 in 2006, 36 in 2007 and 44 in 2008.

The number dropped to 25 in 2009, then accelerated by mid-2010 to 23, almost matching last year's total, based on records by Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove.

Because of the impact of Katrina, people haven't gotten their lives back, said Dr. Sherman Blackwell, the executive director of Singing River Services in Pascagoula, which serves Jackson and George counties.

"Katrina not only changed the face of the Gulf Coast," Blackwell said, "but the soul of it, the way people live. That impacted population has an increased risk for suicide and other risk-taking behaviors: alcohol and drugs, especially among middle-age men and adolescents."

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