St. Bernard schools treat student mental health worries

Virtually every student at Chalmette High School, along with the principal, teachers and staff, lost homes and material possessions to Hurricane Katrina, causing physical and emotional trauma.

Nineteen months later, the school system is rebounding with the help of a team of mental health professionals.

The St. Bernard Unified School opened on the Chalmette High campus 11 weeks after floodwaters receded. Enrollment dropped from approximately 8,800 systemwide to only 343 on one functional campus.

Today, the Unified School ia a thing of the past and Chalmette High has returned, its halls filled with an obvious camaraderie.

Teachers stop students between classes to ask how their parents, many of whom attended the same school, are doing. Upperclassmen help younger students navigate the halls, forgoing the traditional high school caste system.

These scenes of relative normalcy belie the physical and emotional struggles all St. Bernard residents have faced since Katrina. Students at Chalmette High and nearby Andrew Jackson Elementary have been receiving help from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center mental health professionals, a partnership made in an effort to heal wounds left behind in Katrina’s wake.

Husband-and-wife mental health professionals Drs. Joy and Howard Osofsky, working in the New Orleans area for two decades, said their most important work began in the days after the storm when they began volunteering services to St. Bernard schools.

The Osofskys have since written grant proposals to secure funding, and several organizations and individuals have helped pay for the program, but LSUHSC spokeswoman Leslie Capo did not know how much money has been secured.

Despite the financial uncertainty, the partnership between the LSUHSC and St. Bernard’s recovering schools is serving as a pilot program that could be expanded into other hurricane-affected districts, said State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek.

“After Katrina we knew we had to do what we could,” Joy Osofsky said. “We talked to (St. Bernard Parish Schools) Superintendent (Doris) Voitier while we were still in Baton Rouge and came down to St. Bernard in September. Doris asked us if we could work with all the kids who were returning.”

The Osofskys and a team of about 20 associates began working with the first responders in Orleans Parish immediately after the storm at the behest of Mayor C. Ray Nagin, Howard Osofsky said. Their work led them to St. Bernard where 100 percent of the first responders lost their homes and branched into the schools, where Joy Osofsky said the majority of students and teachers alike needed help.

To qualify for mental health help, an individual must show outward signs of trauma — signs simmering just below the surface of most of the student population, Joy Osofsky said.

“We immediately began screening for services,” she said. “A high percentage of the parents also qualified for services.”

Symptoms such as trouble concentrating, anger control problems, anxiety as the 2006 hurricane season approached, clinginess and irritability began popping up in even the youngest students, the Osofskys said. Older students, many who were without parental supervision, began displaying dangerous risk-taking behaviors such as unsafe driving.

“We had a lot of adolescents who couldn’t talk to their parents, sometimes because their parents hadn’t returned yet,” Chalmette High principal Wayne Warner said. “School was an anchor in their lives. These people (the Osofskys) were godsends. There was so much to do considering we were starting from nothing.”

“The work of Howard and Joy Osofsky is a great example of how a local school system can partner with community resources to address the needs of the children,” Pastorek said.

Howard Osofsky said the lifelong friendships formed in St. Bernard will keep him and his wife in the parish for as long as their services are needed.

“Being able to work with the children in school really destigmatizes getting mental health services,” Joy Osofsky said. “Working with and coming to the school has been wonderful.”•