Experts offer tips on coping with Harvey’s trauma.
THE TRAUMA OF HARVEY Experts offer tips for the depression, fear and uncertainty that can come in the wake of a natural disaster
Last Sunday, water swept through Sara Cress’s home and washed everything away.
In the Timbergrove house Cress owns with her husband, the hardwood floors are gone. Her piano is gone. And all the couple’s belongings, from furniture to hairbrushes, either disappeared or were covered with filthy floodwater.
The grief has come in stages, Cress said.
“First I was mourning all of my things,” she said. It wasn’t until several days later, Cress said, that “I realized: Oh no, we’re homeless.”
If you live in Houston or any other place hit hard by Harvey, last week was pretty awful.
Some, like Cress and her husband, lost homes. Others stayed at shelters or with friends, not knowing what happened to their houses or cars. Others were spared and were wracked with survivor’s guilt.
The storm might have blown away, but that doesn’t mean the worst of Harvey is over. There’s still plenty of grief and shock to come.
“The first week you see anxiety, fear, panic” Dr. Amin Shah said. The rest — the long-term effects of trauma — set in after three or four weeks.
As soon as the George R. Brown Convention Center opened as a shelter last week, Shah was there, helping set up the mental health relief station for storm and flood evacuees.
Shah, executive vice chair for community psychiatry in Baylor College of Medicine’s Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has worked with people in crisis after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike.
Between 10 and 20 percent of evacuees at the shelters last week were seeking mental health relief, Shah said. That could mean anything from a refill on antidepressants to a session with a psychiatrist.
“Most of the people are coming because they’re scared,” he said. “They’re afraid that when they go home, they won’t have anything. There’s a lot of fear of unknown. … If they have to restart their life, how will they do it?”
Shah’s advice: Breathe deeply. If you survived last
week, that’s great. But brace yourself, he said, because “a second wave is going to come.”
“This is going to sink in,” he said, especially for those who lost property.
Right now, he said, everyone’s just glad to be alive and happy their families are safe. Then, once they’re home and begin to assess what they’ve lost, “the trauma and the stress of all these things is going to set in.”
The bad feelings extend even to those who didn’t lose anything in last week’s flood.
“There’s this survivor’s guilt for being OK,” Eloísa Pérez Lozano said.
Last week, when flooding seemed imminent, Pérez Lozano evacuated her League City home with her husband and 9-month-old son. They went to her parents’ house, she said, and since then “we’ve had water, power, enough food for all of us.” And their home didn’t even get flooded.
Pérez-Lozano spent a lot of last week watching TV news and watching her friends’ stories unfold on social media — and feeling helpless.
“I see the image and I see the video and I can’t reconcile it,
because it’s not what I’m physically experiencing,” she said. “I just can’t reconcile it.”
Stuck in the house with extended family, Pérez-Lozano started combing the closets for clothing that could be donated. That made her feel better. Still, she said, “a day doesn’t go by when I don’t think how incredibly lucky we are.” So how do we cope? Talk to each other, Shah said. Pay attention. Look for signs of depression and trauma in your loved ones — different eating habits, staying isolated and not interacting with others the way they used to.
That includes paying attention to the children in your life,
whether they lost their homes or not.
“Kids are the main people that we shouldn’t ignore,” Shah said. “Adults have big defense mechanisms. We can survive, mostly.” But kids don’t understand what’s happening. They might mourn the loss of their favorite blanket or toy or doll, but they also pick up on the anxiety of the people around them.
And if you’re feeling traumatized yourself, don’t hide it, Shah said. Get out those feelings of loss and anxiety and sadness.
“A simple thing is talk to people,” he said. “Don’t hide your feelings. Talk.”
Theresa González has thrown herself into helping the students and families in her school district.
An elementary teacher who lives in Spring, González knows plenty of people whose homes flooded when Cypress Creek overflowed last week. Her home is dry, but as soon as she could leave her neighborhood on Thursday, she started tracking down supplies for the families in her school district — especially the families who were displaced. She’d been waterlogged in her neighborhood for days, but late last week she got a text from a parent in her district looking for baby formula and wipes.
“Once I received that text, it was, ‘This is something I can do,’ ” she said. She located some donations and delivered them to the parent’s house.
Helping each other may be the key to surviving Harvey’s aftermath.
Cress, who lost her home last week, is buoyed by the help she’s received, from friends and strangers.
“I’m learning how to ask people for help,” she said. “I’m learning not to be too proud about it.”
Instead of saying “let me know if you need anything,” Cress advised, do something specific. Cress’s hairstylist, a friend, realized Cress had lost all her hair products, so she’s buying her client new shampoo
and conditioner from the salon.
“This is not a big deal but it’s also something she can do,” Cress said.
Serious post-Harvey depression, though, won’t go away with a good deed. Some Houstonians will need to see a psychiatrist or get some form of counseling. If you don’t have insurance to cover it, Shah said, FEMA might provide funding.
Time heals. But when the acute shock and sadness fade, Shah said, “it’s not that everything will be hunky dory.”
“I hope it is,” he said. “But some of us will struggle. And we have to be prepared.”