Long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina on the psychological well-being of evacuees Andrew Scott LaJoie, Ginny Sprang and William Paul McKinney 1 Hurricane Katrina of August 2005 forced more than one million people to evacuate the Gulf Coast of the United States. This study examines the psychological health and well-being of a subset of evacuees to determine the prevalence of ongoing mental health problems. Interviews were conducted with 101 adults who evacuated to Louisville, Kentucky, and were living in the state at the one-year anniversary of the event or had recently returned to the Gulf Coast. The psychological health and well-being of respondents was evaluated using several well-validated measures. More than one-half met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder and a majority were suffering from depression and anxiety. The mean quality of life score was 0. 6 on a scale from 0 – 1 , suggesting that adaptation and return to pre-hurricane well-being had not occurred 12 months after the storm. The potential for long-term psychological damage exists in this sample of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Results suggest other evacuees may also be at heightened risk. Keywords: Hurricane Katrina, psychological well-being, quality of life, trauma Introduction Two hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, caused unprecedented damage to the Gulf Coast during August 2005. Separated in time by only a few weeks, the two storms made landfall with wind speeds in excess of 130 miles per hour and they brought devas- tating storm surges that affected nearly 200, 000 square miles. In the days following the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, Jr., enacted a mandatory evacuation of the city’s 1. 3 million residents. By the time both storms had passed, more than 1, 800 fatalities had occurred and at least 500,000 people were homeless (Louisiana Geographic Information Center, 2005; Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, 2006). Those who stayed in temporary shelters in Louisiana were mostly young-to-middle-aged, low-income people who suffered from some form of chronic illness, including diabetes (14 per cent), lung disease (13 per cent), psychiatric disorders (14 per cent) and heart disease (10 per cent) (Greenough et al., 2008). The impact on the quality of life of those who stayed behind was unques- tionably harsh. This study reports on the long-term well-being of persons who left the Gulf Coast —specifcally, those who evacuated to Louisville, Kentucky, following Hurricane Katrina. It compares the social and mental health of two groups of evacuees: those evacuees who remained in Louisville one year after the hurricane and those who returned to the Gulf Coast after only a brief retreat from the storm. The World Health Organization (1946, p. 1) defnes health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or doi:10.1111/j.0361-3666.2010.01181.x Disasters, 2010, 34(4): 1031-1044. © 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation © Overseas Development Institute, 2010 Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA