Hurricane Katrina Newsbrief

Behavioral Health Staff Visit Gulf Region To Support Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief Workers

Shortly following hurricane Katrina, Thomas Demaria, PhD, Assistant Vice President, Behavioral Health Services, was selected by the federal agency SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency) to serve as team leader for a group of SNCH mental health professionals deployed to the Mississippi gulf region. SAMHSA is the mental health service division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Other team leaders selected by SAMHSA for this honor included a retired admiral from the Carter Center in Georgia and the founder of Project Liberty in New York.

The SNCH team deployed to Biloxi included Dr. Demaria, Minna Barrett, PhD and Dina Kerasiotis, NP, PsyD. A second SNCH team, consisting of Brian Baldwin, CSW, and Jay Comcowich, PhD, was deployed to Texas.

Dr. Demaria’s role in Mississippi was to help guide teams of experts from Oklahoma City and SAMHSA in both the assessment and remediation of the mental health needs of responders and existing service providers from the Department of Health and Disaster Mental Health. In Texas, the staff worked in the large shelters. In Mississippi, they supported evacuees who were also state employees. Almost 40 percent of the state work force was missing following the hurricane, which presented major issues in maintaining necessary services. Nearly 60 miles of homes and businesses in the Mississippi coast were destroyed.

The first two days of the trip, Dr. Demaria’s team worked in Jackson, providing consultation to the State Department of Mental Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the US Department of Health & Human Services. On the following days they traveled to the area of major hurricane impact. The majority of their work was in Gulfport and Biloxi.

“The responders were tired and overwhelmed by the enormity of the work they faced. Many local responders lost their homes, and some lost family members. Many local residents had concerns about their children's education as some 300 schools were damaged and 125,000 children were without places to attend school. Some of the National Guard helping to police the area was directly deployed from service in Iraq,” explained Dr. Demaria.

“I learned that many of the community-based models that we use at the WTC Family Center, Home Ground and SIBSPlace were directly translatable to Mississippi despite cultural and regional differences,” said Dr. Demaria.

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