THE ill winds of hurricane Katrina are still blowing, long after the storm has passed.
Though the immediate threat is over, the authorities are concerned that the disaster will have a devastating long-term impact on people鈥檚 mental health. Those who lost friends or relatives, or their homes and jobs, may be particularly vulnerable.
To determine the extent of the problem, the US National Institutes of 午夜福利1000集合 and Harvard Medical School announced on 5 January a joint programme to monitor 2000 survivors of the disaster every three months. This will seek to identify the mental health and other challenges faced by the survivors, and pass information on to local policy-makers, allowing them to tailor aid to the people who need treatment.
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The effort follows the discovery by health officials that they had no systematic way of keeping tabs on people affected by the events of 9/11. 鈥淭his isn鈥檛 like your mother dying, where you grieve for three months and then move on,鈥� says Ronald Kessler, a healthcare policy specialist at Harvard. 鈥淭hese people have had their entire world shifted beneath them.鈥�
