A new program explores the lingering effects of Superstorm Sandy
Those are some of the questions that a recently launched service project hopes to answer. "There's emerging data out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina that the mental health effects are long-standing," says the project's designer, Dr. Jo Anne Sirey, an associate professor of psychology in psychiatry, who explains that major storms strike especially hard at adults over 60 who have pre-existing mental health conditions. "But even individuals who may not be suffering from depression, anxiety or alcohol abuse watch the news, and when we head into another hurricane season it brings back a kind of anniversary response and they worry."Three years after the floodwaters of Superstorm Sandy receded, it's not only homes that remain unrepaired. Less visibly, the lives of many New Yorkers disrupted by the stress and physical destruction of that epic event are nowhere near back to normal. Especially impacted were senior citizens. How many are still suffering? What services do they need?
Dr. Sirey estimates that at least 10 percent of the 500,000 older residents in the five boroughs may still suffer Sandy aftereffects. By interviewing as many as 2,000 New Yorkers, the project — dubbed Sandy Mobilization, Assessment, Referral and Treatment-Mental Health (SMART-MH) — is designed to assess how well older residents displaced by the storm are doing, and help connect those in need with appropriate services and counseling.
With $1.4 million in FEMA funds, SMART-MH has hired and trained an interdisciplinary team of two dozen outreach workers. Many are bilingual, speaking such languages as Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian, Japanese and Farsi. Armed with dedicated mobile phones and notebook computers, these clinicians, social workers, and student trainees can enter data on the spot and, when merited, make immediate referrals for counseling or support services. The outreach began last fall, and by year's end had assessed more than 100 individuals; the project runs through September 2016.
In addition to documenting the ongoing concerns of Sandy victims — and essentially putting them on an emergency services map should another storm strike — another goal of SMART-MH is to function as a social services matchmaker. One of those contacted is Birdella McGreachy, a 70-year-old African American and lifelong New Yorker. McGreachy spent two days without power or running water in her 16th-floor Coney Island apartment, which is located a block from the beach and boasts views of the Atlantic. She moved in with her sister in an unflooded part of Brooklyn, but relations grew tempestuous as her stay pushed into the second week. Nor did finally putting the key in her own front door return McGreachy's life to normal. The elevators to her building weren't working for the first couple of days, so she had to take the stairs, carrying up food from the Red Cross truck parked across the street. "I look at the ocean every day and I think, it's so beautiful but so deadly," she says. "That storm put the fear of God in me. It was like the beach came to the people instead of the people going to the beach. The other day, when it was raining so hard and they were calling it a Nor'easter, that was nothing. But I'm always watching that water."
McGreachy and her SMART-MH outreach worker have discussed the possibility of counseling, and he put her in touch with a city social worker to address a difficult family issue unrelated to the storm. He's also arranging for assistance in cleaning her apartment and getting groceries; before the storm, she got shopping help from a nearby senior center, which only recently reopened. "As we're meeting with senior centers, mental health providers, and faith-based communities, we're hoping we'll leave behind some connections that didn't exist before," Dr. Sirey says. "We're creating relationships that may live on beyond this program."
— John Grossmann
A version of this story first appeared in Weill Cornell Medicine,Vol. 14, No. 1.