“Study overlap” is about the plethora of mental health studies coming out of this country’s academies and health institutions. It grew out of frustration because so many of those academies were advertising their incredibly negative findings in national publications, while not letting the locals they were studying know the results of their studies or offering them any assistance or solutions. Frankly, the numerous studies from different noncooperative institutions just seemed, again, nonsensical. They still do, and the practice continues to this day. “FEMA trailers” is about what I thought was the core of the Mississippi Coast’s post-Katrina mental health crisis: FEMA trailer parks. I wanted to explore the issue and bring it to the forefront. It was part of a package of stories I wrote on FEMA trailer parks and this story was the mental health aspect. “Resiliency” was a response to the repeated negative stories on post-Katrina mental health. I admit to being guilty of writing mostly about how bad things were, and I wanted to bring to light the fact that it was actually possible that good mental health things could come from a disaster. I got the idea to write about Post-Traumatic Growth after attending the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference this past fall and attending a lecture on it. This was the second part of a two-part series on PTG, the first being about the Katrina-affected family of a marine who killed himself after returning from Iraq. People gave more positive feedback to this part of the series about “Frank.”
