After Maria, ‘panic attacks, crying’
Puerto Rico suffers emotional toll, too
JAYUYA, Puerto Rico – People who visit a local community center here for bottled water or hot coffee often break down crying or shaking uncontrollably.
Margie Vazquez, a community organizer who lost her home to Hurricane Maria seven weeks ago, often cries at home before heading to the center to help others. When members of the Federal Emergency Disaster Agency first showed up a few weeks ago with pallets of water, many people started crying, she said.
“A lot of panic attacks, a lot of crying,” Vazquez said. “There’s a lot of suffering right now.”
People in this storm-ravaged mountain town still need water, electricity, hot meals and new roofs. But increasingly they also need help managing the anxiety and trauma that have seeped into their lives since Maria tore through here Sept. 20, demolishing homes and upending lives. The storm destroyed 157 homes in Vazquez’s neighborhood alone, she said.
Dealing with the longterm mental trauma of Puerto Ricans in Maria’s aftermath, is becoming a growing concern for disaster officials in the island’s recovery. The storm killed at least 55 people, destroyed thousands of homes and left remote mountain towns such as Jayuya even more cut off from the rest of the world. More than half of the island still doesn’t have power and about 10% don’t have clean running water.
Stress often sets in as storm survivors transition from securing basic needs, to longer-term thoughts of where to live and how to rebuild their homes, said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.
“People are extremely vulnerable right now” in Puerto Rico, he said. “Virtually everyone needs some assistance
“People are extremely vulnerable right now. Virtually everyone needs some assistance.”
Irwin Redlener
to get through this.”
To help people in harder-to-reach communities, officials at Ponce Health Sciences University began deploying teams of doctors, psychologists and public health specialists into the mountains. Teams have seen more than 6,000 patients since the storm.
Inside the community center in the Mameyes neighborhood of Jayuya, stacks of bottled water and untouched military Meals Ready to Eat sit at one end of the darkened building. At the other, a team of public health students urge locals to wear long pants and closetoed shoes if wading into a river to wash clothes, or add a few drops of unscented Clorox to water before drinking.
At an intake table, university workers check locals’ blood pressure and noted medical histories, then add a few questions: Are you sad? Trouble sleeping? Hand tremors? Anxiety? Those with signs of anxiety were directed to a psychologist in the rear of the center.
Helping locals overcome stress and trauma has become a key function of the school’s role in recovery, said Kenira Thompson, vice president of research at the university.
“It’s essential. People need to have the mental health in order to regain some semblance of normalcy,” she said. “If you don’t get a grip on acute stress, that could spiral into other things that could become potentially incapacitating. We need to have a way to help these people regain some hope.”
Eva Medina, 34, who lost her home, visited the Jayuya center to treat back pain but also was hoping to talk to someone about the stress of losing her home.
“I’m depressed,” said Medina, who along with her 13-year-old son moved in with her parents after the storm.
“Each time (we) talk about this subject, it’s painful. You could see everything you had and now you have nothing.”