Tonette Robinson expertly adjusted her granddaughter’s braids, while another girl twirled in the background.
“Put your bonnet on,” Robinson said in a voice that was both command and caress. “I need you to go in the room so I don't get no interruptions. I have an important meeting.”
Robinson shook her head, smiled into her laptop camera, and said, “She has a doctor appointment at Children's, and I always try to get them prepared ahead of time.”
The six- and seven-year-old girls have autism, Robinson explained, and transitions must be managed carefully. This is one of the many lessons she’s learned since she gathered up the pair in Tallahassee, Florida, and rushed them home with her to New Orleans. They were toddlers then, and their mother had just died.
Shaquitha Robinson was only 30 when she went to sleep one night and never woke up. Her cause of death remains unclear. Was it an overdose? Was it suicide? Was it something else? Tonette Robinson may never know. But she does know that her daughter, who always struggled, began a downward spiral in 2005 from which she would never recover.
That’s when Hurricane Katrina rammed into the Louisiana coast, bringing with it a wave of trauma that all but engulfed the young people in its path.
“The flood waters flooded out the whole of New Orleans. Bodies was floating on water. They had feces in the water,” Robinson remembered. She worked in food service at a New Orleans hospital and was expected to be there during the hurricane. With nowhere to leave her three children, she brought them with her.
“All the generators went out, tornados was dropping and hitting in that parking lot, tearing up the building and breaking windows, and they ended up putting us out,” she said.
The family then made a treacherous trip through floodwaters and back to their home, which was still mostly intact. Most families had evacuated the neighborhood, and there was no power, but they were together. Still, 15-year-old Shaquitha seemed to struggle more than the rest of them.
“She went into a depression, because we ran out of food, and it was taking them precious time to come in to help us,” Robinson remembered. “When they did come out, it was like she was still in her room, never wanted to come out.”
“She was always the type of child to stay alone,” Robinson said. “She was isolated from everybody.”
Isolation can be a danger sign in a teenager who’s survived a disaster, according to Julie Kaplow, a clinical psychologist and the executive vice president of trauma and grief programs and policy at The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute. She said traumatized teenagers may withdraw.
“They don't want to get close to anybody”, Kaplow said. “It can manifest as risk-taking behavior. They say, ‘I don't care about my life anymore, so I'm just going to drive recklessly.’ Or it can manifest as suicidal ideation: ‘I just don't want to be here anymore.’”
Research has confirmed that Hurricane Katrina was hard on children’s mental health, finding that they were 4.5 times more likely to have serious emotional disturbance post-Katrina than they were before the storm. Kaplow, who helped found the Harvey Resiliency and Recovery Program at Texas Children’s Hospital following Hurricane Harvey in 2017, noted that her research on Harvey has fleshed out a large body of evidence that has found that untreated disaster-related trauma can impact a child’s mental health across their lifespan. That’s particularly true if they experienced additional traumas before the disaster, ranging from economic instability to the death of a loved one.
After Hurricane Katrina, 70% of the kids who had trauma symptoms experienced the death of a loved one before the storm, including Shaquitha Robinson. She lost both of her grandmothers in the years preceding the hurricane.
“Losing her grandmothers, that took a toll on her,” Tonette Robinson said. “She loved them so much.”
Kaplow says intervention in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, whether it's a hurricane or a wildfire or a mass shooting, can help children process their trauma and prevent the development of ongoing and long-term mental health problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder.
In this episode of Petrie Dish, Kaplow shares the Six S's that can offer kids a sense of safety and stability during the critical three-month period after something terrible has happened. She also outlines the warning signs of a child whose trauma might be a precursor to more serious mental health challenges.
