As a mental health professional in the hurricane zone, I can verify that Katrina comes up in every evaluation. In some cases, people come in who suffered significant losses. More often, however, people who were coping adequately before Katrina found they no longer had enough coping skills once the storm hit. Some of them have extra people living in their homes, some have lost their jobs or have loved ones who have lost their jobs. Some are traumatized from their evacuations, some have been invaded by looters. Everyone has a Katrina story.

The comments about Post-Katrina New Orleans are true. Tourists and the world away from this area cannot understand the toll it is taking on locals and on those displaced but it is a challenge living here. Everything is harder to do and accomplish than ever before, with less money to go around, yet more problems to solve. People of all walks of life have been affected from the Lower 9th Ward to uptown; everybody has been traumatically affected in some way, whether it is by having lost a home or loved one, to knowing someone who has. The redtape wrapped around everything that the government has to offer us has squeezed us nearly as bad as Katrina itself. We personally are on our FOURTH blue tarp on our roof that blew off in the hurricane (and we've paid for each tarp, it was NOT free from FEMA); we have had a FEMA trailer in our front yard for 2 months but can't get into it until FEMA sends an electrician with permits and gives us an electrical box for our "all electric trailer"; we are camping out indoors in several rooms of our rain-damaged 5-bedroom home; we lost a car, and all our possessions on our first floor including all my husband's music gear which included 2 pianos and all our CD stock, as well as all our possessions in our attic; we have rain coming in our house on stormy days still; and the list goes on, plus our priority is that we caregive for my 88 year old mother with Alzheimers. And we are pretty normal compared to other's problems who lost everything. This is huge and America should keep an eye on us because it could happen anywhere. Our biggest damage in New Orleans was from man-made mistakes not nature: from faulty levees.

I can't imagine going through what you folks have. It sounds terrible. I hope you people from New Orleans hold your government accountable for allowing that levee system to remain as it was for all those years, and find out where the money went for levee improvements, maybe the politicians can pay up now.

To be honest local governments and FEMA obviously dropped the ball bigtime. Im from Pennsylvania and im very lucky and thankful I didn't have to go through the hell you all have gone through since Katrina and for the 6 months since. Other than the Red Cross what other organizations accept canned food, water, medical supplies, etc. I was interested in gathering items from organizations here in PA and sending them to the Gulf Coast in the hardest hit areas. Feel free to send me an email and i will see what friends and i can do up here in Pa to help you all out. Take Care and Stay Safe!