Results from an extended study on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have found links between a person’s pre-disaster mental health and their post-disaster recovery. Performed by a multi-institutional research team including members from Yale, Harvard, and the University of Massachusetts, the study focused on members of the New Orleans community who had been recruited prior to the hurricane for a study looking at low-income parents at community colleges, and who had completed surveys discussing topics including their physical and mental health. Follow-up surveys were then conducted again one, four, and twelve years after the hurricane, so as to examine the change in levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms with time.
Findings from the study included the observation that those individuals who had previously identified issues with mental illness, physical health issues, or lower levels of social support were more likely to have higher levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms. However, once the impact of the disaster on the individuals was controlled for, the relationship between physical health, lower levels of social support, and post-traumatic stress symptoms was not as strong, with pre-disaster mental health becoming the most significant predictor of chronic post-traumatic stress symptoms.
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