Understanding the Oil Spill's Psychic Toll

For all the environmental and economic harm caused by the disaster in the Gulf, the most lasting--and least visible--damage could be inflicted on the mental health of its victims

  • Matt Slaby for TIME

    The Landry Family

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    How to Heal
    Complicating things further, most Gulf communities lack the mental-health resources to help spill victims recover from emotional damage. The folks at J.F. Gauthier Elementary School may be doing wonderful work, but it's hardly typical of the region. Plaquemines Parish, in southeastern Louisiana — home to hard-hit fishing ports like Venice — has just a handful of available counselors, and while local governments have asked BP for money to fund mental-health programs, very little has arrived. (The company, characteristically dilatory, says it is considering what to fund.) The claims process might not help either; Kenneth Feinberg, the independent lawyer who will be running the $20 billion compensation fund, has said that he doesn't think mental health claims will qualify for compensation. And Gulf states like Louisiana were already in the red before the spill; they don't have the funds to pay for the mental aftercare that will be needed. "Nongovernmental organizations and others are trying to provide services," says Dr. Ben Springgate, executive director of community health at the Tulane School of Medicine. "But there's simply no financial support so far."

    In the meantime, psychologists and other experts are working to determine where help should go when it becomes available, launching studies to track the social impact of the spill and gauge the mental-health needs of communities. "We're trying to utilize all the information we can," says Dr. Howard Osofsky, head of the psychiatry department at Louisiana State University. "We have to do whatever possible to help these families."

    Until that help arrives, Gulf residents must do what they've done before: take care of their own needs — and remember that they're capable of doing so. One of the most damaging effects of the spill is that it takes away victims' sense of power. They feel helpless before BP and the government — and even the oil itself, with its habit of disappearing and reappearing without warning. "That eats away at people," says John Trumbaturi, a social worker in Plaquemines. "We want to help them improve their own coping skills."

    That's the thinking behind the work of the St. Bernard Project and a similar community mental-health center opening in Plaquemines. Yvonne Landry knows that her friends and family in the region's tight-knit fishing community are hurting, but that doesn't mean they want to open up. "The men will never talk to a counselor," she says. But if they're leery of professionals, local men might be willing to open up to one another in peer counseling sessions like the kind she's been involved with in the St. Bernard Project. "We can talk to each other, just sit down and breathe," Landry says.

    Indeed, if anyone can bounce back from the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, it is the people of this region, who've survived hurricanes, corrupt state governments, the once hopeless New Orleans Saints and more. But surviving and eventually thriving may require residents to let go of their anger and perhaps even put aside a quest for legal justice. One of the most surprising findings from Picou's Exxon Valdez research was that the biggest predictor of sustained stress years after the event wasn't whether you were a fisherman or lived close to the spill but whether you were involved in a lawsuit. Fighting Exxon in court led to what Picou calls a "secondary disaster," as litigants were forced to relive the spill over and over.

    That's why traumatized Gulf residents might be smart to listen to Feinberg. "The people of Louisiana are pretty resilient," he said at a town-hall meeting in Port Sulphur last month. "Get a check, and move on as best you can." It's not fair, but for the sake of their psyches — and their children's — it might be the best advice they are going to get.

    This is an updated version of a story that originally ran in the August 9, 2010 issue of TIME.

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