When a person is accustomed to a daily routine within its environment and when suddenly that daily routine or its environment abruptly changes the mental health of that person truly can be adversely affected. It is true that prolomged periods of cold, rainy or snowy conditions do depress most people. It is also true that warm and bright sonny days cause most people to feel happy.
As a matter of fact, the loss of ones home and personal property, which results from the damage caused by a violent weather event, is enough to cause a condition known as temporary insanity. Yes and many people do suffer from prolonged periods of grief and/or depression that can have a lasting affect on the mental health of a person for several years. I never met a person who was happy after that person suddenly became homeless. To lesser degree, a sudden loss of power also causes mental stress. First of all, those people don’t know for how long they will have to do without electricity, heat, drinking water and/or their phone service.
For example: If you recall, thousands of people within New Orleans suffered without electric service for many weeks or months before they could again enjoy the comfort of their own home. That is, if the home itself was suitable for Human habitation.
Other local services were also lacking in the number of people who could come to the aid of a sick person or one who became the victim of a criminal, due to a shortage of medical and law enforcement personnel. Many of those poor people who suffered the most were the ones who were trapped for several days within the sports stadium. You better believe that most or all of those people are still truly angry as they can be. You see, a fleet of helicopters could have carried those people to a safe shelter within a day or two after that hurricane no longer posed a threat to Human life and property.
Like it or not, the aid from the people within our Government wasn’t enough and the aid that eventually arrived was truly slow in getting to that weather ravaged location. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have yet returned to their home within the City of New Orleans, if such a home remains, and they might never return to the place that each of them once called home.
There are also those people who were relatively untouched by that hurricane, even if they too lost electric power and/or had to live within a motel or a hotel until they were allowed to return to their home. Then there is the mental stress caused by not being able to return to their place of employment because that means of income no longer exists.
Those are all problems that can truly make a person crazy, and when the worst of that event came to an end some people continue to suffer the mental stress of living within a place where the next violent weather event might cause as much or more damage to the City and the people of New Orleans, Louisiana.
