Uprooted by disaster, relenting to despair
BRAINTREE -- When Frank ''Jimmy" Hood swallowed the fistful of oxycodone pills that ended his life in a Brighton apartment last December, he left a farewell message for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
''Thanks FEMA for helping me put my life together. What a joke," the 47-year-old father of three wrote in the suicide note he tucked into his toiletries bag. ''Three months too long."
Hood, like many forced to evacuate by Hurricane Katrina, had a number of life problems long before the levees began to leak.
Hood was paralyzed from the waist down and had been confined to a wheelchair for nearly two decades. He was divorced and lived with his mother in New Orleans. And he was hospitalized for a previous suicide attempt even as the hurricane struck.
But Hood's family members in Braintree, where he moved after his home was destroyed, believe it was the storm's devastation followed by months of wrangling with FEMA that plunged Hood into ultimate despair.
Although FEMA approved Hood for housing support, officials advised him to withdraw his individual request so that all of his family members could apply together for a larger sum. And so Hood did just that -- he withdrew.
But family members say that Hood, who had spent three months writing and calling FEMA, could not bring himself to join them in applying again.
''I have absolutely no doubt that my brother would be here today if it were not for Katrina," said Susan Khalife, Hood's sister. ''It was just the breaking point. He lost everything in the storm and then he couldn't even get a place to live. He had nothing more to live for."
No one knows for sure how many people touched by Katrina have taken their own lives. Thousands of evacuees remain scattered around the country and it has been difficult to account for the deaths among them. For example, a study by the Louisiana Office of Public Health found that the number of suicides in the state remained roughly the same in the final months of 2004 compared to 2005, but it did not take into account that the population declined by 390,000 in the immediate aftermath of the storm.
Some public health officials are alarmed by the stories they hear. Like that of Dr. Lisa Osberg-Wilson, a dermatologist and mother of three, who killed herself Nov. 4, less than two months after her New Orleans home and medical practice were destroyed. And Jerome Spears, 28, who shot his fiance and killed himself in January in their rented home in Atlanta after the storm forced him to uproot his family and music business. And Stevenson J. Palfi, a nationally known filmmaker, who shot himself in his New Orleans home last December after losing most of his possessions and years' worth of files. The list runs to at least a dozen names.
Dr. Anthony Speier, director of Disaster Mental Health operations for the Louisiana office of Mental Health, is worried about depression among evacuees whose lives remain in flux or ''this whole general malaise," as he describes it.
Earlier this month his office sponsored a Suicide Prevention Summit in Baton Rouge. And one of the things that was discussed was the hurricane season looming around the corner.
''People are anxious," said Speier. ''Now we have a new anxiety layered on the many issues that are unresolved for some people. It is very worrisome." 