Clergy in New Orleans need PTSD counseling

Clergy in New Orleans need counseling

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press Writer
Fri Aug 31, 5:20 PM ET



NEW ORLEANS - Clergymen struggling to comfort the afflicted in New Orleans are finding they, too, need someone to listen to their troubles.


By JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press Writer
Fri Aug 31, 5:20 PM ET



NEW ORLEANS - Clergymen struggling to comfort the afflicted in New Orleans are finding they, too, need someone to listen to their troubles.

The sight of misery all around them — and the combined burden of helping others put their lives back together while repairing their own homes and places of worship — are taking a spiritual and psychological toll on the city's ministers, priests and rabbis, many of whom are in counseling two years after Hurricane Katrina.

Almost every local Episcopal minister is in counseling, including Bishop Charles Jenkins himself, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jenkins, whose home in suburban Slidell was so badly damaged by Katrina that it was 10 months before he and his wife could move back in, said he has suffered from depression, faulty short-term memory, and difficulty concentrating or sleeping.

Low-flying helicopters sometimes cause flashbacks to the near-despair — the "dark night of the soul" — into which he was once plunged, he said. He said the experience felt "like the absence of God" — a lonely and frightening sensation.

Churches and synagogues have played an important role in New Orleans' recovery, supplying money and thousands of volunteers to rebuild homes and resettle families. But an April survey found 444 places of worship in metropolitan New Orleans — about 30 percent — were still closed 20 months after the storm because they were damaged or their congregations scattered. click post title for the rest.

Even clergy can feel the absence of God after trauma. It is not the only outcome of PTSD but it shows that a strong faith will not prevent PTSD. It has nothing to do with faith, nothing to do with courage, or bravery, education, intelligence, patriotism or anything else other than a human being exposed to trauma.

Think of what this event in New Orleans is teaching us about combat. Think of the results from this one storm and the flood that followed when the waters came rushing in. Leaving politics out of it ( which is very hard for me to do) this event left scars that will last a lifetime that no one else can see with their eyes.

September 11, 2001, is engrained in the soul's of the people from New York more than anyone else in the nation, while the nation feels the heart tug, we were not there. Some felt as if their lives were in danger across the nation, but they were not there witnessing it in real time. We are still seeing the numbers increase from those exposed to this one day's events.

Now add in these traumatic days, acknowledge the wounds the people exposed to them carry, then think about experiencing them everyday for a year or now for fifteen months, and still knowing that when you go home, the safety of home will not last because you will be re-attacked all over again in the next round of redeployments. Some are on their fifth tour.

Then think of the people having to live in Iraq. Those who do not get to go home for a rest because it is their homes being attacked on a daily basis. They did nothing wrong and they lived in relative peaceful neighborhoods before the invasion. The Iraqi people have traumatic events happen daily, horrifically and without end.

Why is it we can understand the effects of Post Traumatic Stress when it happens here but we can never accept it when it happens someplace else? Each time this nation experiences a traumatic event, there are after shocks reverberating for many years and yet this nation still regards PTSD as if it were some kind of personal defect.

The plain simple truth is, you cannot expose a human to trauma and expect them to just get over it. No one ever lives their lives the same way after trauma. A part of them changes. Sometimes it is only slight changes but other times it is truly life altering.