Weathering the storm: the long-term consequences of Hurricane Katrina on mental health, mobility and recovery

This dissertation uses the Gulf Coast Child and Family Health (G-CAFH) Study to examine the long-term mental health patterns of individuals highly affected by Hurricane Katrina, and establish trajectories of mental health recovery. To do so, I use a multidimensional perspective to identify the mechanisms that illustrate why mental health recovery is often an unequal process for disaster survivors. I examine sociodemographic, household, and social frameworks to tell a comprehensive story of mental health recovery and how it is connected to mobility. In the first analysis, I consider how mobility rates differ depending on various social characteristics, and how such relationships can reproduce and reinforce inequalities during the recovery process. These analyses also consider how different rates of mobility are associated with the likelihood of vulnerable populations experiencing mental health distress. Results demonstrate that disasters often work to sustain inequalities that existed prior to the event and that mental health distress is tied to high rates of mobility. In the second analysis, I consider how the addition or subtraction of household members can affect an adult respondent’s mental health and how household instability might mitigate or exacerbate the negative mental health effects of disasters. Results from these analyses suggest that respondents experienced high rates of mobility coupled with household instability in the four years following Katrina. Somewhat surprisingly, there is a significant negative effect on mental health for living in a household that expanded but not for when a household contracted. In the third and final analysis, I examine the relationship between perceived social support and mental health using different types and levels of social support. Results suggest that emotional support—rather than instrumental—provides the greatest positive influence on mental health over the course of recovery. Most importantly, these findings suggest that perceived social support mediates the effect of mobility on mental health distress. Lastly, I conclude with a discussion about mental health trajectories following disasters and argue that mental health recovery patterns can be categorized in three ways, including resilient mental health, stalled mental health, and downward mental health.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Alexis Ann Merdjanof