Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:27:30.324Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Working Through Disaster: Re-establishing Mental Health Care After Hurricane Katrina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2013

Natalie D. Baker ,
Martha S. Feldman  and
Victoria Lowerson
Natalie D. Baker
Affiliation:
Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, School of Social Ecology, Irvine
Martha S. Feldman*
Affiliation:
Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, School of Social Ecology, Irvine Department of Political Science, Business and Sociology, University of California, Irvine
Victoria Lowerson
Affiliation:
Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, School of Social Ecology, Irvine
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Martha S. Feldman, PhD, 226G Social Ecology 1, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-7075. (e-mail [email protected]).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Objective

Our research explored how mental health care providers continued to work during and after Hurricane Katrina.

Methods

We interviewed 32 practitioners working in the New Orleans mental health care community during and after Hurricane Katrina. Through qualitative data analysis, we developed three temporal periods of disruption: the evacuation period, the surreal period, and the new normal period. We analyzed the actions informants took during these time periods.

Results

The mental health care providers adapted to disruption by displaying two forms of flexibility: doing different tasks and doing tasks differently. How much and how they engaged in these forms of flexibility varied during the three periods.

Conclusions

Informants’ actions helped to create system resilience by adjusting the extent to which they were doing different tasks and the ways in which they were doing tasks differently during the three time periods. Their flexibility allowed them to provide basic care and adapt to changed circumstances. Their flexibility also contributed to maintaining a skilled workforce in the affected region. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2013;7:222-231)

Keywords

disruptionadaptationresiliencemental health carehurricane katrina
Type
Special Focus
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , June 2013 , pp. 222 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Carr, L. Disaster and the sequence-pattern concept of social change. AJS. 1932;38:207-218.Google Scholar
2.Stoddard, ER. Conceptual Models of Human Behavior in Disaster. El Paso, Texas: Western Press; 1968.Google Scholar
3.Barton, AH. Communities in Disaster: A Sociological Analysis of Collective Stress Situations. Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Book; 1970.Google Scholar
4.Dynes, RR. Organized Behavior in Disaster. Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath Lexington Books; 1970.Google Scholar
5.Quarantelli, EL. Sheltering and Housing after Major Community Disasters: Case Studies and General Observations. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University; 1982.Google Scholar
6.Haas, JE, Kates, R, Bowden, MJ. Reconstruction Following Disaster. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press; 1977.Google Scholar
7.Hogg, SJ. Reconstruction following seismic disaster in Venzone, Friuli. Disasters. 1980;4(2):173-185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
8.Kroll-Smith, J, Couch, S. What is a disaster? Int J Mass Emerg Disasters. 1991;9(3):355-366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9.Phillips, BD. Post-Disaster Sheltering and Housing of Hispanics, the Elderly, and the Homeless. Final Project Report to the National Science Foundation. Dallas, Texas: Southern Methodist University, Department of Sociology; 1991.Google Scholar
10.Quarantelli, EL. Disaster studies: the consequences of the historical use of a sociological approach in the development of research. Int J Mass Emerg Disasters. 1994;12(1):25-50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11.Neal, D. Reconsidering the phases of disaster. Int J Mass Emerg Disasters. 1997;15(2):239-264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12.Bolin, R. Long-Term Family Recovery from Disaster. Boulder, Colorado: University of Colorado; 1982. Program on Environment and Behavior, Institute of Behavioral Science, No. 36.Google Scholar
13.National Research Council of the National Academies. Committee on Disaster Research in the Social Sciences: Future Challenges and Opportunities. Facing Hazards and Disasters: Understanding Human Dimensions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press; 2006.Google Scholar
14.Sutcliffe, KM, Vogus, T. Organizing for resilience. In: Cameron KS, Dut-ton JE, Quinn RE, eds. Positive Organizational Scholarship. San Francisco, California: Berrett-Koehler; 2003:94-110.Google Scholar
15.Wildavsky, A. Search for Safety. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers; 1991.Google Scholar
16.Weick, KE, Sutcliffe, KM. Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty, 2nd ed. San Francisco, California: John Wiley and Sons; 2007.Google Scholar
17.Vogus, TJ, Sutcliffe, KM. Organizational Resilience: Towards a Theory and a Research Agenda. In Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers: Systems, Man, and Cybernetics October 7-10, 2007. Montreal, Canada; 2007:3418-3422.Google Scholar
18.Kendra, JM, Wachtendorf, T. Elements of resilience after the World Trade Center disaster: reconstituting New York City's Emergency Operations Centre. Disasters. 2003;27(1):37-53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
19.Bigley, G, Roberts, K. The Incident Command System: high-reliability organizing for complex and volatile task environments. Acad Manage J. 2001;44(6):1282-1299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20.Weick, KE. The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: the Mann Gulch disaster. Adm Sci Q. 1993;38(4):628-652.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21.Weick, KE, Sutcliffe, KW, Obstfeld, D. Organizing for high reliability: processes of collective mindfulness. In: Sutton R, Staw BM, eds. Research in Organizational Behavior. Vol 21. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press; 1999:81-124.Google Scholar
22.Frankl, VE. Man's Search for Meaning. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press; 1962.Google Scholar
23.Coutu, DL. How resilience works. Harv Bus Rev. 2002;80(5):46-50, 52, 55 passim.Google ScholarPubMed
24.Maddi, SR. Hardiness: The courage to grow from stresses. J Posit Psychol. 2006;1(3):160-168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25.Glaser, B, Strauss, A. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago, Illinois: Aldine; 1967.Google Scholar
26.Griffies, WS. Health care infrastructure post-Katrina: disaster planning to return health care workers to their home communities. Psychiatr Serv. 2010;61(1):70-73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
27.Holstein, JA, Gubrium, JF. The Active Interview. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications; 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28.Lofland, J, Snow, D, Anderson, L, Lofland, L. Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and Analysis, 4th ed. Belmont, California: Wads-worth/Thompson Learning; 2006.Google Scholar
29.Corbin, J, Strauss, A. Basics of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc; 2008.Google Scholar
30.Guba, EG, Lincoln, YS. Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In: Denzin N, Lincoln Y, eds. Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications; 1995:313-371.Google Scholar
31.Charmaz, K. Grounded theory. In: Emerson RM, ed. Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations, 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press; 2001:235-252.Google Scholar
32.Emerson, R, Fretz, R, Shaw, L. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Processing Field-notes: Coding and Memoing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33.Kendra, J, Wachtendorf, T. Creativity in Emergency Response to the World Trade Disaster. University of Delaware Disaster Research Center Preliminary Paper. 2002; 324:122-146. http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/733. Accessed May 7, 2010.Google Scholar
34.Mills, J, Weatherbee, T. Hurricanes hardly happen: sensemaking as a framework for understanding organizational disasters. Cult Organ. 2006;12(3):265-279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
35.Palen, L, Liu, S. Citizen communication in crisis: anticipating a future of ICT-supported public participation. In: Proceedings of the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction conference on human factors in computing systems. Emergency Action Session April 28-May 3, 2007; San Jose, California.Google Scholar