Katrina’s Two-Sided Impact: Survey finds disorders, resilience after tragedy

In the year following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, rates of serious mental disorders roughly doubled among survivors from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, a new survey indicates.

During that same time, however, the proportion of Gulf Coast residents with mental ailments who also talked of wanting to kill themselves or of making suicide attempts dropped sharply, says a team led by psychiatric epidemiologist Ronald C.