TPC-Journal-V5-Issue4

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 4 434 later, I was happy to be returning to my circle of friends, delighted to be welcomed by colleagues, comfortable with my professional future, financially secure, and confident that health care was readily available in New Orleans. When I returned, I found a city that was different in many ways since the hurricane, and a city that also was much the same. The differences in New Orleans 10 years after Hurricane Katrina, from a personal perspective, were both subtle and striking. After living with my family temporarily in the mountains of Georgia, my return to New Orleans for a visit about two months after the storm was astonishing. Public services were limited. On the other hand, the city was functioning. People were going to work, utilities had been restored, and residents who had returned were doing their best to resume the lives they had known prior to the storm. I experienced many personal challenges, which included repairing my hurricane-damaged home, finding daily care for my elderly mother, and hosting friends for a year who had lost their home in the flood that followed the hurricane. During these challenges, I remained aware and thankful that my burdens were far fewer than those of many of my neighbors, friends and fellow residents. New Orleans 10 Years Later: My Perspective My personal impressions of New Orleans 10 years after the storm are generally positive, but there are many scars for those living in the aftermath of the storm. When I returned in 2014, one of my friends who had not left and was still living in the city said, “After Hurricane Katrina, everything changed” (Anonymous, personal communication, August 1, 2014). He said his friends were gone, he no longer had his job, his children and their families had relocated out of state, and everything seemed a mess. His reaction was not unique. Much has been written about the hardships faced by people after Hurricane Katrina, particularly by the poor and uneducated, but many of the stories of professional mental health workers living in the city at the time of the storm have not been told. For the past decade, counselors in New Orleans have been serving the citizens, including counselors who lost their homes in the flood after the storm. For me, day-to-day life in New Orleans 10 years after Hurricane Katrina appears to be much what it was before the disaster. There is still too much poverty and crime. Although in the French Quarter one can hardly see any differences a decade later, a drive through the Ninth Ward or the community of Lakeview near Lake Pontchartrain shows the devastating aftermath of the hurricane. Changes in Mental Health Services in New Orleans Since Hurricane Katrina In an effort to encourage the mental health professionals I contacted to be forthright and free from inhibition in their responses, no individuals or agencies are identified; and because of this degree of privacy, only general information is provided. Mental health professionals who were still working at agencies in New Orleans and responded to my questions included counselors, psychologists and social workers in public and private nonprofit agencies that provide a wide array of counseling and other mental health services to all levels of the population. I was able to obtain informal, personal responses to a series of questions from eight mental health professionals who were working in counseling and other mental health agencies before Hurricane Katrina and are still working in agencies a decade later. The information, perspectives and comments they provided helped paint a picture of mental health services in New Orleans today. It is telling in itself that I was able to locate only a few mental health professionals who were still working in the same agencies in New Orleans 10 years after Hurricane Katrina. The agencies