Study Examines the Mental Health of Black Women Community College Students Who Lived Through Hurricane Katrina

A new study, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, examines the mental health of low-income mothers in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The vast majority of the subjects of the study were African Americans.

The study used 2003 data on the mental health status of women at community colleges throughout the United States. Some 532 women in the study were at three community college campuses in New Orleans. To learn about the impact of the hurricane on the mental health of these women, two follow-up interviews of the New Orleans women were conducted 11 months after the hurricane and five years after the hurricane. While some of the women remained in New Orleans, many had left the city for other states.

The follow-up surveys compared the women’s mental state in 2003 to see if they were suffering from psychological distress or showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome. The results showed that although stress levels were reduced from the first follow-up survey, 30 percent of the women continued to be under psychological stress in the later survey. One third still showed signs of post-traumatic stress.

Co-authors of the study were Christina Paxson, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University; Elizabeth Fussell, an associate professor of sociology at Washington State University; Jean Rhodes, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston; and Mary Waters, the M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.

“I think Katrina might be different from a lot of natural disasters in the sense that it completely upended most people’s lives,” Professor Paxson said. “About two-thirds of the sample is back in the New Orleans area, but almost nobody lives in their old home. So they’re living in new communities. They’ve been disrupted from their friends and their families. The whole fabric of their lives has really been changed.”

The authors plan to continue studying the mental health of these women over the longer term.

 

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

Online Articles That May Be of Interest to JBHE Readers

Each week, JBHE will provide links to online articles that may be of interest to our readers. Here are this week’s selections.

Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education regularly publishes a list of new books that may be of interest to our readers. The books included are on a wide variety of subjects and present many different points of view.

Higher Education Gifts or Grants of Interest to African Americans

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.

In Memoriam: Wendell Harris, 1940-2024

Throughout his career in education, Harris served in a wide variety of settings including K-12 schools, community colleges, and universities. He also spent several years as an administrator with the New York Department of Education.

Featured Jobs