An Interview with Marshall Lee

This interview was conducted in the Marriott Hotel on Canal Street in New Orleans, on November 21, 2007.

ROWELL: What is your profession?

LEE: I am a psychotherapist with a PhD in Psychology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I work at Tulane University. I work in the University's clinic for students and staff. And I also work at a new place that started up after Hurricane Katrina. It's called the New Orleans Center for Wellness and Problems of Living. Dr. Arnold James and I are co-founders of the center. We provide mental health services for middle to working class people.

ROWELL: What form of mental health care are you providing your clients?

LEE: Counseling, therapy.

ROWELL: What have you witnessed as a result of Hurricane Katrina? Did you open the center as an answer to a critical urgent need after the hurricane?

LEE: Because what we have noticed is that after the storm or in the spirit of recovery, that the mental health needs have increased and the services have decreased. There have been a large number of psychiatrists and psychologists and other therapists who have left the city and not returned. I think prior to the storm, and don't quote me on these, there might have been something like 500 psychiatrists in the city and now there might be something under 100. A lot of the mental health providers just have not returned. Even for the severely mentally ill, the beds are not here for them, the psychiatric beds are not available for them, so we proposed this center as a way of meeting the needs of working people. People who work in the school system, people who work with police, people who work in the hotel and entertainment industry. We saw our center as a way of offering something for people in between the people that get services in the community mental health centers, people on welfare, and the high-end people who can pay for their own therapy. We hope to offer our center as a place for people between those two extremes.

Now, since the storm, we've noticed everyone is talking about how the suicide rates have increased, how drug and alcohol addictions have increased, how the over-eating and obesity problems have increased. There's been a major increase in all kinds of mental health problems since the storm: depression, anxiety, etc. And probably most of us, me included, are suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome just from what we've gone through, during the storm, right after it, and these two years since. And so I think the need is definitely there for new mental health services because people are in pain, people are suffering mentally because they are suffering economically, physically, while they are rebuilding.

ROWELL: What have you seen as common symptoms of mental disorder? What are some of the collective and individual psychological effects of Hurricane Katrina on the people of New Orleans?

LEE: I think, as I've said, that all of us are suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. And that is, I think, the most common and widespread mental disorder: PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. But with that comes a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety, and those are just general kinds of disorders, yet those disorders have a lot to do with the high suicide and murder rates since the storm. The suicide rate has increased and, again I don't know all of the statistics on this but it's been documented that it's really been a major increase since the storm, that's related to depression. The other thing that's common, too common, is the increase in the consumption of alcohol and the increase in the consumption of food. New Orleans has always had a history of, "Let the good times roll"; its had a history of eating well and drinking well and having a good time so I think that's been exaggerated since the storm.

Everybody I know talks about gaining weight since Katrina because people have been using food as...