The long-term effects of hurricanes and major disasters on children’s mental health

It’s been nearly two months since Hurricane Helene devastated communities across the Southeast. Experts say the storm’s effect on children might last for years to come. Ali Rogin speaks with Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, to learn more.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
It’s been nearly two months since Hurricane Helene devastated communities across the Southeast, and experts say the storm’s effects on children might last for years to come. Ali Rogin has more.
Ali Rogin:
Tens of thousands of children and young adults have dealt with disruptions at home and school following Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Researchers from Boston College found up to 70 percent of students could show symptoms of PTSD in the first three months following such disasters.
Lori Peek is the director of the Natural Hazard Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies how children and socially marginalized populations fare after disasters. Lori, thank you so much for being here. What are the recovery processes for children after they’ve gone through a hurricane like this?
Lori Peek, Natural Hazard Center, University of Colorado Boulder: There is actually no one single trajectory that children follow after a disaster. Their recovery is influenced by multiple factors. How much damage their community, their school, their home sustained, how disrupted their lives are in the afterburners aftermath of the disaster, how much social support they receive.
But the good news is that we do have good information about what can help children to recover after a disaster and to get them back into a stable routine, back into school, back into a better situation, even after a catastrophic event like Helene or Milton.
Ali Rogin:
And what are some of those strategies that can help children get back on track?
Lori Peek:
So some of the things that really help children in the aftermath of disaster include getting back into a routine, and that can be a really hard thing when a home is damaged or destroyed, when a school is closed for a period of time, when parents have lost work, or when there’s other disruption around the children.
Also providing social support to children and ensuring that support comes from multiple angles in their lives and so that the support comes from trusted loved ones in the family, that peers are available. Peer support networks can be very important, especially to adolescents and teens. And also that children are receiving support through their schools is of the utmost importance.
Ali Rogin:
What are some signs of distress that young people might show in the wake of a natural disaster that adults might miss?
Lori Peek:
Our research after Hurricane Katrina really revealed that sometimes children, and especially adolescents and teens, they may help hide that distress from the adults in their lives. And we learned after Katrina that a lot of young people were doing this because they saw how distressed and how disrupted their parents, their teachers, other trusted adults in their lives, how much of a struggle they were having. And so we learned from the kids themselves that oftentimes they were trying not to talk about that distress and to suppress it so they wouldn’t be a burden to the adults in their lives.
And so the lesson from that is, if you’re an adult out there listening is to do everything you can to listen to your child and to really try to ask them how they’re doing and not just sort of a one and done, but to regularly check in with your child or with the children who you teach or who you care for to make sure that they are doing okay.
Because again, children, just like adults, they don’t follow sort of one straight path after a disaster. They may be feeling okay one day and another day, have a really hard day. Very young children, sometimes they may regress, they may start engaging in bedwetting, or they may sort of become really clingy as children get older. They might start acting out or they might kind of turn inwards. A previously very outgoing child might stop behaving in that way if things seem really serious.
Doing everything you can to try to get your child to the school counselor or to another mental health professional to make sure that they are doing okay and getting the support they need.
Ali Rogin:
You know, we talk a lot about investments that are needed infrastructure to better protect our communities from massive weather events. But what about on the mental health side? Is this something that communities should be investing more in as a preventative measure as we see more and more of these intense weather events?
Lori Peek:
Absolutely. And every investment that we can make before a disaster, that investment can pay off multiple times, many times over after the disaster. Weather, as you’re suggesting, it’s in hardening our infrastructure to make sure that all of the schools and homes and businesses and all the things that make up a child’s community that they’re not so badly damaged or even destroyed in a disaster.
So those infrastructure investments, they do matter and they do make a difference. It’s also important to make sure that we’re investing in the social infrastructure, the various aspects that make up a child’s life, making sure that we are properly funding mental health services, ensuring that there are spaces for children to be involved before a disaster even happens, to be involved in their community, to be involved in their schools, to make sure that they have those strong social networks around them. Having somebody that the child can turn to after the disaster can be absolutely critical in terms of mitigating those negative mental health impacts. And so anything we can do before the disaster is of utmost importance.
Ali Rogin:
Lori Peek, Director of the Natural Hazard center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, thank you so much for being here.
Lori Peek:
Thank you so much for having me, Ali.