'Katrina brain': New Orleans looks to Houston, and sees itself

New Orleans: Several of Nance Harding's clients were acting oddly last week. Harding, a psychotherapist in New Orleans, noticed that some were quick to cry, others were irritable and easily startled; some were drinking more heavily than usual.

Fuel oil mixed with floodwaters near the collapsed
12th Street levee during Hurricane Katrina in
New Orleans, September 1, 2005. 

These were clients who had gone through Hurricane Katrina 12 years ago, and she was picking up the signals of a localised form of post-traumatic stress syndrome - or, as she calls it, "Katrina brain”.

It is a condition, she said, that ramps up each June with the return of hurricane season and spikes with the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29. And this year, there is Hurricane Harvey.

Harding said she finds it easy to recognise the symptoms because "I have it", though not from Hurricane Katrina. She was nine years old and living in Galveston, Texas, when Hurricane Carla hit in September 1961. "I've walked in water up to my chest," she said.

Read the story in today's Melbourne Age by Campbell Robertson and John Schwartz - “'Katrina brain': New Orleans looks to Houston, and sees itself.”