Volume_5_Issue_4_Digest

1 TPC Digest Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, the counseling profession in New Orleans has changed. Along with a group of eight counselors and other mental health professionals who had been providing services at the time of the hurricane and were still working in the city 10 years later, I provided our impressions of counseling in New Orleans a decade after the storm. New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is different from the New Orleans that existed in August 2005. While the French Quarter, Uptown and other affluent neighborhoods appear hardly changed, at a deeper level the city is not the same as it was before the hurricane. The most obvious change, aside from the areas where houses are still boarded up and abandoned, is the population, which has become smaller, older, more educated and a bit poorer. New Orleans is now more Hispanic, more Caucasian and less African American. Before Hurricane Katrina, there were not enough counseling and other mental health services for poor and middle-class families in New Orleans, and the same situation continues to exist 10 years after the storm. However, the counselors and other mental health professionals who have now worked in New Orleans for over 10 years were able to provide valuable insights and suggestions for coping with a disaster. It appears that mental health agency personnel in other locations who want to learn from the experiences of practitioners who dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans should consider the advice given by several mental health professionals with whom I communicated—prepare to be flexible in case disaster occurs. Perhaps counselors and administrators who have leadership skills that include creativity and flexibility would be ideal for agencies after disasters have occurred, as opposed to those who have a high need for structure or who have trouble operating without clear procedural guides. The counselors and other mental health professionals I spoke with also noted that while partnerships and collaborative arrangements have the potential for helping mental health agencies survive and even prosper after a disaster, such arrangements should be evaluated carefully prior to agreement. Leaders in one of the New Orleans agencies attributed their growth and expansion to collaborative relationships and partnerships. However, several other mental health professionals appeared to have had negative experiences with collaborative arrangements and recommended that such offers be viewed with caution. Accepting time-limited financial support also can lead to unforeseen problems. The most important lesson I learned from interviewing agency administrators in New Orleans who had been at their agencies for the 10 years since Hurricane Katrina was that it would have been impossible to prepare for the aftermath of the storm. As a result, it is important after a disaster for counselors and administrators to assess their unique situation, determine what counseling services are needed, provide in-service training when necessary, avoid relying on short-term funding to plan for the future and pay attention to the self-care of counselors. New Orleans is unique and Hurricane Katrina’s flooding of the city was a unique event. Several mental health professionals indicated that assessing the needs of the community after the storm and responding to those needs, as well as caring for the well-being of their employees, were important aspects of their successful survival. Theodore P. Remley, Jr., is a Professor at Our Lady of Holy Cross College. Correspondence may be addressed to Theodore P. Remley, Jr., 4123 Woodland Drive, New Orleans, LA 70131, tremley@olhcc.edu. 1 TPC Digest