Brethren graduate student reflects on Gulf Coast counseling experience.

"Surreal is the only word I have for it," said Karen Croushorn, describing the Gulf Coast of Mississippi last fall. Driving south from Jackson, Miss., was "eerie...like a nuclear bomb had gone off," she said "We were still looking at roads that were impassible, no clean drinking water, no sanitation."

Croushorn, a member of Manassas (Va.) Church of the Brethren and a former Brethren Volunteer Service (BVS) worker, was one of 14 graduate students and two professors from George Mason University who spent a week in Mississippi doing mental health counseling with survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Croushorn is a part-time graduate student in counseling, and also works for a credit union.

The students spent the week before Thanksgiving in Mississippi, offering counseling services to survivors almost three months after Katrina hit. The group were "not doing formal counseling," Croushorn said, but mainly just sitting down and talking with people who needed a listening ear. The opportunity to do such work is unusual for students who are not authorized to work in disaster zones by the American Red Cross because they are not licensed, she said. But the professors who accompanied the group made connections with the director of Mississippi's Mental Health Counseling Association. Mississippi had such a great need for counselors that the association was willing to take the students. The association director arranged for places to stay and sites at which to work. Croushorn's group worked with almost 600 people at sites from East Biloxi to Pearlington, and west almost to the Louisiana border. The work sites were central locations for survivors to receive services such as help with housing and food.

Many of the people the group met were aid workers themselves, or counselors who were personally affected by the disaster as they attempted to serve clients. Some of the counselors were from Louisiana, and were working in Mississippi because of so much need in the state. The students counseled both people who had evacuated, and people who had stayed through the storm. The professors worked with the professional counselors.

The group was in Mississippi when the "honeymoon period" after the disaster was waning, she said. People were frustrated with the lack of help and attention compared to that given to Louisiana, and a lot of racial tension was resurfacing, she said. "Instilling hope was what we were doing while we were there," she said. The "absolute resiliency" of the people surprised her, as well as the welcome the group received, and the thanks from the people they worked with. "And the fact that they're going to rebuild," even without the insurance or the money to rebuild, she said.

Another goal for the group was to help collect data in order to be effective advocates for Katrina survivors, because funding for such services is being cut off, Croushorn said. "In order to get funding, you have to have data." At the time, the George Mason group was told they were the last such group to be in Mississippi to help with the mental health counseling needs.

As she reflected on the experience a couple of months later, the needs she saw in Mississippi spoke to Croushorn's Brethren understandings of social justice. It was a perspective she had learned in BVS as well, she said. "It put a whole new spin on Thanksgiving, for all of us," she remembered. "First, how much being in something like that (Hurricane Katrina) puts things in perspective."

Since their return from Mississippi, the students have become advocates for the counseling needs of Katrina survivors, Croushorn said. The group is working toward doing lobbying on Capitol Hill. Some of the students planned to attend a March 14 march in Washington to protest the evictions of Katrina survivors without other viable housing options.

Croushorn has learned to talk through the "Katrina fatigue" that she has seen in other areas of the country, where some already are tired of dealing with the aftermath of the disaster. "There's a different kind of `Katrina fatigue' in Mississippi," she said. "It's not that they're tired of it--they can't get away from it, and they're tired."

Source: 3/15/2006 Newsline
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