Hurricane Katrina Case Study

Even though it has been about a decade since New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina, there are still residents who have not been able to return home. This natural disaster affected the individuals living in this Gulf Coast city and did not leave one person unscarred by the physiological stress of living through this type of event. Weems et al. (2006) found that, “The residents of the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina were subjected to a large number of traumatic events and experienced a number of psychological symptoms in the relatively immediate aftermath of the hurricane” (pp. 2302). Losing so much at once can have an emotional effect on an individual, and this can be made worse if that person is pregnant. “Prenatal maternal stress has been found to have long-lasting effects on the behavioral and physiological development of the offspring,” (Weerth and Buitelaar, 2005, pp.1). Furthermore, their research goes on to find that during pregnancy, “These programming effects on the fetus would be physiologically mediated through heightened and/or abnormal activity of the maternal sympathetic-adrenal-medullary system (SAM) and especially of her

According to a research done by Elliot and Pais (2006), “In this case, it is a region cross-cut by deep and complex divisions of race and class that have hardened over time without direct interference from outsiders” (pp. 317). When it comes to race, the role of how individuals responded to the hurricane before it hit comes into play. “Our findings indicate that blacks across the region were less inclined than whites to evacuate before the storm, mostly because they did not believe the hurricane would be as devastating as it eventually was,” ( Elliot et al., 2006, pp.317). Many of those who stayed believed that the government had built the levees to withstand any natural disaster that would hit the