Why Do Some Hurricane Survivors Thrive After Disaster?

Summary

Short Wave (NPR): "Why Do Some Hurricane Survivors Thrive After Disaster?"

Aired: September 29, 2025
Host: Jon Hamilton (guest host)
Guests: Ritu Chatterjee (NPR mental health reporter), Noonak Pham (adjunct professor & Katrina survivor), Mary Waters (Harvard sociologist), David Abramson (NYU professor), Sarah Lowe (Yale psychologist)

---

EPISODE OVERVIEW

This episode examines the psychological journey of Hurricane Katrina survivors, exploring why some people not only recover after catastrophe, but actually thrive. The conversation centers on the scientific concepts of post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth, drawing both on years-long research and personal stories. The discussion highlights what helps people recover, the factors that foster growth after trauma, and considerations for supporting disaster-prone communities in the future.

---

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

1. Long-Term Mental Health Impacts of Hurricane Katrina

• 20 years after Katrina, researchers have gained a deep understanding of survivor resilience by tracking thousands of people over a decade.
• David Abramson (NYU): "Around the 13, 14 year mark after the hurricane, people had begun to have a sense that they had come to some sort of stability in their lives." [01:02]
  • Resilience is a gradual process; reaching stability can take over a decade.
• Initial studies found 40-50% of survivors had high levels of distress—grief, anxiety, depression—right after the storm. [01:39]
• Over 40% suffered from PTSD symptoms in the first year. [01:56]

2. Exploring Post-Traumatic Growth

• Definition: Growth refers to positive psychological change following adversity—"I suffered, but I grew."
• Noonak Pham (Tulane adjunct): Recalls the Nietzsche quote: “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” [02:51]
• Researchers measure post-traumatic growth with specialized questionnaires.
• Jon Hamilton: “So people had all sorts of mental health struggles right after the event. But it sounds like researchers found that many survivors recovered. I mean, eventually.” [02:07]
• Even those with PTSD often reported personal growth in later years.

3. Personal Story: Noonak Pham, Katrina Survivor

• Pham was a teen when Katrina struck; her family, recent immigrants, had just bought their first home.
• They expected a short evacuation, which turned into two months. Their house survived flooding but required repairs. [05:03-05:46]
• Pham observed her parents’ struggles—insomnia, stress, anxiety about rebuilding. [06:01]
• As English speakers, Pham and other young people in the Vietnamese community became de facto advocates for their families and others—handling paperwork, seeking aid. [07:07]
• Pham: "The Katrina experience made me grow as a person, also made me rethink about how to recover from a major trauma." [07:28]

4. The Science Behind Growth After Trauma

• The term post-traumatic growth was coined in the mid-1990s (Richard Tedeschi & Lawrence Calhoun) to describe positive shifts after trauma. [08:03]
• Mary Waters (Harvard sociologist) followed over 1,000 single parents post-Katrina, finding that:
  • Nearly two-thirds reported post-traumatic growth 12 years after the storm.
  • Waters: “The storm was terrible. I would never choose to live through that disaster. But...it got me on a new trajectory. And I see my children flourishing, and I see myself flourishing in these new possibilities.” [09:00]
• Waters also tracked a reduction in PTSD symptoms over time:
  • 44% with PTSD after 1 year, 32% after 4 years, 17% after 12 years. [09:42-10:07]
• Key finding: Post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth can co-exist—sometimes, greater trauma fuels greater growth. [10:27-10:47]
  • Waters: “In some ways, the stronger your PTSD, the stronger the traumas that you experience, the more growth you report.” [10:47]

5. What Factors Foster Post-Traumatic Growth?

• Financial Resources: Those facing financial instability after disaster had less growth. [Sarah Lowe, Yale] [11:08]
• Social Support: Close relationships and a sense of community significantly increase the likelihood of growth. [11:44]
  • Pham: “That someone's there for you if you need it, a sense of purpose or meaning in life, that one's life has meaning and direction.” [11:44]
• Self-Efficacy: The belief in one's own ability to manage challenges predicts stronger recovery and growth. [12:06-12:08]
• Supporting disaster-prone communities in advance—bolstering resources, keeping families and networks intact, ensuring long-term support—can mitigate negative impacts and maximize growth. [12:31]
• Jon Hamilton: “People might need mental health care for a long time after a disaster hits. Rates of PTSD were still high even after a dozen years.” [12:56]

6. Metaphor for Recovery: Kintsugi

• Pham likens recovery to the Japanese art of Kintsugi: mending pottery with golden lacquer, embracing flaws and imperfections as part of the object’s history and beauty.
  • Pham: “What we're trying to do is, again, we are acknowledging that there are negative outcomes, but how can we build upon that experience for people to come out better?” [13:30]
• Survivors can "mend the cracks" with the right resources before and after a disaster. [13:52]

---

NOTABLE QUOTES & MEMORABLE MOMENTS

• David Abramson (NYU):
  • “Around the 13, 14 year mark after the hurricane, people had begun to have a sense that they had come to some sort of stability in their lives.” [01:02]
• Noonak Pham:
  • (On immigrant families post-Katrina) “Younger kids in the community, who knew how to navigate the computer, who knew how to fill out forms, we did it for our parents, and then we just did it for others in the community.” [07:07]
  • (On recovery) “The Katrina experience made me grow as a person, also made me rethink about how to recover from a major trauma.” [07:28]
  • (On Kintsugi and recovery) “It's sort of embracing flaw and imperfection. And I think that particular philosophy should be applied within the disaster field...” [13:30]
• Mary Waters (Harvard):
  • “The storm was terrible. I would never choose to live through that disaster. But...it was one of the more positive things that happened in my lifetime because it got me on a new trajectory. And I see my children flourishing, and I see myself flourishing in these new possibilities.” [09:00]
  • “In some ways, the stronger your PTSD, the stronger the traumas that you experience, the more growth you report.” [10:47]
• Sarah Lowe (Yale):
  • “Financial instability after the disaster...was associated with consistently low levels of post traumatic growth." [11:08]

---

TIMESTAMPS FOR IMPORTANT SEGMENTS

• [00:21–01:56] — Introduction; Katrina impact: mental health and resilience research findings
• [02:16–02:51] — Definition of post-traumatic growth; Nietzsche quote and context
• [04:36–07:28] — Personal narrative: Noonak Pham’s Katrina evacuation, challenges, and role in her family/community
• [07:39–09:28] — Research on post-traumatic growth and thriving; Mary Waters’ cohort study findings
• [10:27–11:44] — Coexistence of PTSD and growth; vital role of resources and social support
• [12:06–12:21] — Self-efficacy as a predictor of growth
• [13:10–13:52] — Kintsugi as a metaphor for recovery

---

FINAL REFLECTIONS

Despite long-lasting trauma and daunting initial struggles, many Katrina survivors ultimately displayed remarkable psychological adaptation—emerging changed, sometimes even improved by the ordeal, if they had sufficient support. The science, and the stories, underscore the crucial role of community, resources, and personal agency in transforming adversity into growth.

---

For listeners interested in understanding resilience, trauma, and how individuals and communities recover from disaster, this concise, insightful episode offers both scientific explanation and compelling personal experience.

Transcript

[Announcer]

This message comes from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer center this October. For a short time, your gift to MSK will be triple matched to help support breast cancer research, treatment and care. Donate [e-mail] match you're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

[Jon Hamilton]

Hey, shortwavers, Jon Hamilton here in the guest host chair. And joining me today is Ritu Chatterjee. She covers mental health for npr. Hi, Ritu.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Hey, John.

[Jon Hamilton]

Ritu, I know you been reporting on mental health of people who live through Hurricane Katrina. It has now been 20 years since that storm devastated New Orleans. What have researchers learned about the survivors?

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Well, you know, the one thing that stood out to me was how much the research has revealed about human resilience. Researchers have really been able to see what this looks like after following more than a couple thousand survivors for nearly a dozen years. And one of those researchers is David Abramson. He's a social and behavioral sciences professor at NYU.

[Jon Hamilton]

Around the 13, 14 year mark after the hurricane, people had begun to have a sense that they had come to some sort of stability in their lives. Okay, 13 to 14 years. I mean, developing resiliency is apparently not a quick process. It can take time.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Yeah. And also remember, Katrina was one of the most devastating natural disasters in the U.S. some people lost pretty much everything except their lives. So here's what Abramson and his team learned about the mental health of the nearly thousand survivors they looked at. This is right after the storm.

[Jon Hamilton]

We found that somewhere between 40 and 50% of the people in our cohort were expressing very high levels of mental health distress, complicated grief, anxiety and depression.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

And you know, John, other researchers looked specifically at symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder and found over 40% of survivors had PTSD in that first year after the storm.

[Jon Hamilton]

So people had all sorts of mental health struggles right after the event. But it sounds like researchers found that many survivors recovered. I mean, eventually.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Yeah. And this was beyond just finding stability. One of the things that they asked survivors about is called post traumatic growth.

[Jon Hamilton]

Okay, new term for me, Ritu.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Yeah. So post traumatic growth is something that psychologists have documented in people who've gone through, you know, serious illnesses, natural disasters, accidents. And they have specific questionnaires they use to assess, assess people for post traumatic growth. But the bottom line is people who go through this say that, yes, I suffered a lot. It was terrible, but I grew through that experience.

[Noonak Pham]

There's this saying by Frederic Nietzsche, right. That which does not kill us, make us stronger.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

That's Noonak Pham, and she's an adjunct professor at Tulane University. She studied post traumatic growth. And she's also a Katrina survivor herself.

[Jon Hamilton]

So today on the show, what Katrina survivors tell us about post traumatic stress and post traumatic growth and how one.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Can lead to the other.

[Jon Hamilton]

You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from npr.

[Announcer]

This message comes from the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Did you know that every six minutes someone in the US Is diagnosed with Parkinson's? It's the fastest growing brain disease in the world. Chances are you or someone you know is impacted by Parkinson's. The Michael J. Fox foundation is on a mission to find a cure. Now is a critical time for Parkinson's research, and your support will help drive progress toward a cure. Get involved today. Visit michaeljfox.org getinvolved. This message comes from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer center, they know that a cancer diagnosis touches more than one life. It touches entirely entire families. Make a gift to MSK in honor or in memory of someone you love. Your donation fuels groundbreaking research and compassionate care for patients and their families all over the world. Honor their legacy. Give hope to others. Your impact can be doubled. For a limited time, donate now at msk.org honor-2x.

[Jon Hamilton]

Ritu let's go a little deeper into what you've been learning about how an event like Katrina can have a lasting effect on a person's mental health. I'm sure you've heard a lot of personal stories.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

I certainly have. And as I mentioned earlier, researcher Noonock Pham is a Katrina survivor herself. And her story, her personal story, ties into some of what her own research and other studies have found about Katrina survivors. Now, Pham was a teenager when the Hurricane hit on August 29, 2005.

[Noonak Pham]

I was living in Jefferson Parish, which is the parish adjacent to Orleans, which where most of the flood water appeared.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Pham and her parents are originally from Vietnam, and her parents had just bought their first home back then, and they'd been living in it for just about a month when they got the news about the approaching hurricane.

[Noonak Pham]

We just thought of it as another storm. It's going to come. It's going to pass. We're going to take a hurrication, as some of us like to call it back then.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

And so they packed their bags with clothes for just a couple days and went to Houston, Texas, and checked into.

[Jon Hamilton]

A hotel that was optimistic on their part. Right? I mean, I'm betting that hotel stay was a lot longer than they expected.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Yeah, two months or so, according to Pham. And when they finally returned home, they found that they were lucky their house hadn't flooded, but there was still a lot of damage from the winds.

[Noonak Pham]

So, like, the roof and things like that had to be replaced. The back patio was gone, and that needed to replace windows.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

And Pham remembers that it took a big toll on her parents. Mental health.

[Noonak Pham]

I think my parents were really stressed out during that time. I think, you know, as an immigrant purchasing their first house, they weren't sure how they would rebuild. So I saw the physical sign of stress. They weren't sleeping a lot. There was a lot of insomnia. Just a lot of, like, worrying, just like constantly talking about, what are we going to do next?

[Jon Hamilton]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that takes me back. You know, I was in New Orleans more than a year after Katrina hit, and there were still these mountains of debris piled up on the neutral, you know, those median strips that separate traffic. Even people who'd spent their whole lives there were having trouble getting their homes repaired or rebuilt. I imagine it was even harder if you'd come from another country.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Oh, absolutely. And like many first generation immigrants in her community, Pham's parents didn't speak much English, which made things even harder. Like, how do you even find out where to go, how to apply for relief funds? So Pham says her parents asked her for help with the paperwork. And it wasn't just her. This was happening with other kids and other parents all throughout the Vietnamese community down there.

[Noonak Pham]

It kind of became this thing where the younger kids in the community, who knew how to navigate the computer, who knew how to fill out forms, we did it for our parents, and then we just did it for others in.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

The community, you know, Pham says she had to grow up really fast and become an adult in many ways. And she says it was really formative.

[Noonak Pham]

The Katrina experience made me grow as a person, also made me rethink about how to recover from a major trauma.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

And years later, as a graduate student at Tulane, Pham analyzed data on more than 300 Katrina survivors and learned that the kind of personal psychological growth that she experienced was actually common among many other Katrina survivors. And this is what psychologists call post traumatic growth.

[Jon Hamilton]

Right. So tell me a little bit more about that term. Has it been around for a long time?

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Yeah, since the mid-1990s, actually. You know, PTSD as a mental health diagnosis came in 1980, after the Vietnam War. And then around 1995, 96. Two psychologists, Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, introduced the term post traumatic growth to describe some of the positive psychological changes they and other researchers had been documenting among many people who'd been through these traumatic or highly stressful life events. So in the case of post traumatic growth in Katrina, I want to introduce you to another researcher who's been looking into this, sociologist Mary Waters at Harvard University. She actually had been following over 1,000 single parents in two community colleges before the hurricane. And when Katrina hit, she and her colleagues decided to study how this group of people recovered over time.

[Jon Hamilton]

And what did they find?

[Ritu Chatterjee]

You know, nearly two thirds of the cohort reported post traumatic growth 12 years after the storm.

[Mary Waters]

What they would say is, the storm was terrible. I would never choose to live through that disaster. But they said, given that I went through it, it was one of the more positive things that happened in my lifetime because it got me on a new trajectory. And I see my children flourishing, and I see myself flourishing in these new possibilities.

[Jon Hamilton]

Flourishing. That is not the word I expected to hear her say.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Neither did I when I first talked to her. But for what it's worth, I should emphasize that the trauma of the storm, you know, the displacement, loss of homes and loved ones, did leave a lasting scar on people's psyches. Here's Waters again.

[Mary Waters]

In the year after the disaster, when we found people, 44% of them reported symptoms of PTSD. Intrusive thoughts, avoiding areas that would trigger the terrible memories, panic attacks, those kinds of things.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

And then four years later, she says, they found 32% reported symptoms of PTSD. And 12 years later, it was 17%.

[Jon Hamilton]

Yeah. You know, it sounds like, on the one hand, this is one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the U.S. not only did it kill over a thousand people, there were all these lasting mental health impacts, but a lot of survivors say they experience post traumatic growth. Are these like two sides of the same coin?

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Yeah, you can. You can put it that way. And the most surprising thing to me was that among Katrina survivors, even people with PTSD symptoms reported post traumatic growth. In other words, post traumatic stress and post traumatic growth can exist in the same individual. Here's Mary Waters again.

[Mary Waters]

In some ways, the stronger your ptsd, the stronger the traumas that you experience, the more growth you report. So it's definitely tied to going through something which challenges you in a very strong way.

[Jon Hamilton]

Kind of reminds me of what Noonac Pham said earlier about what doesn't kill you, you know, makes you stronger.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Yeah. And, you know, researchers like Waters have also learned important things about resources that can make it more or less likely that people will come out stronger after a trauma. Here's one of Watas Collaborators, psychologist Sarah Lowe at Yale. Financial instability after the disaster that was associated with consistently low levels of post traumatic growth. So I think financial resources really matter both pre and post disaster. Another factor, she says, is social support. So feelings of closeness with others, companionship.

[Noonak Pham]

That someone's there for you if you need it, a sense of purpose or meaning in life, that one's life has meaning and direction.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

And, you know, Low says that those who had more social support after the storm were more likely to say they grew from their trauma.

[Jon Hamilton]

Makes sense.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

And another thing that Noon Ock Pham learned from her work is that something called self efficacy also helps.

[Jon Hamilton]

Wait, wait, self efficacy?

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Yeah. So that's like your own assessment of your ability to get things done, to overcome challenges. So if you have that sense of self efficacy before a disaster, it makes post traumatic growth more likely afterwards.

[Jon Hamilton]

So these are things that we, I guess, as a society can think of providing communities with that are disaster prone and maybe to buffer them from the impacts of natural disasters.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

That's exactly what these researchers think, and they say it is. It isn't just after a disaster, but also before. Can we make sure people in disaster prone areas, you know, have the financial resources to be able to weather and recover from disasters better? Can we make sure that families and neighbors stay together when people are displaced during disasters? Because we know how much social support matters in people's recovery.

[Jon Hamilton]

But the other lesson, it seems to me, is like, people might need mental health care for a long time after a disaster hits. Right? I mean, despite. Despite all the post traumatic growth, rates of PTSD were still high even after a dozen years.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Absolutely, John. And relief efforts normally don't last that long. But I want to end on a hopeful note. Noonok Pham says these findings on post traumatic growth made her think of disaster recovery sort of like the Japanese art form Kintsugi, which involves mending broken pieces of pottery with lacquer.

[Noonak Pham]

It's sort of embracing flaw and imperfection. And I think that particular philosophy should be applied within the disaster field because what we're trying to do is, again, we are acknowledging that there are negative outcomes, but how can we build upon that experience for people to come out better?

[Ritu Chatterjee]

In other words, she says survivors of a natural disaster can mend the cracks left behind by the disaster if they have the right resources before and after the event.

[Jon Hamilton]

Well, Ritu, thank you for sharing this reporting that you've done.

[Ritu Chatterjee]

Thank you, John. It was lovely to talk to you.

[Jon Hamilton]

This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. It was edited by Viet Le. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Robert Rodriguez was the audio engineer, Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm John Hamilton in the host chair. Thanks for listening to shortwave from NPR.

[Announcer]

This message comes from W.W. norton and Company, publishers of Replaceable you Adventures in Human Anatomy, the new book by Mary Roach, best selling author of Fuzz and Stiff, Mary Roach's Replaceable you, now available wherever books are sold.

[Jerry Insurance Ad Voice]

This message comes from Jerry Are you tired of your car insurance rate going up even with a clean driving record? That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with a Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry Ainpr today.

[Announcer]

This message comes from Warby Parker Prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Glasses designed in house from premium materials starting at just $95, including prescription lenses. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you.