Geriatric Mental Health Disaster and Emergency Preparedness

308 Geriatric Mental Health Disaster and Emergency Preparedness
families, then us. They will pick us up in helicopter, fl y to where there’s no
water and drop us off.
—Rafay, 2005
The seventh floor of Memorial Hospital in New Orleans was run as a
separate entity called Lifecare Hospital. It contained long-term patients
who needed special machinery to survive. These patients could not be
evacuated easily in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. No help arrived
for 4 days. When help arrived, four patients were dead. The families concluded
that the patients must have been killed and brought legal action
against the caregivers.
The motives of those who brought suit in the New Orleans Memorial
Hospital case are, at first sight, baffling. One might suppose the natural
targets of litigation would be those allegedly responsible for the disaster.
The concepts of retributions and justice are understandable, and we can
see how these might bring a kind of solace to the grief stricken. In cases
such as the Beslan massacre and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack,
the actual perpetrators are dead and the search for vengeance is more complicated.
The desire for justice and retribution can lead to civil litigation.
The motives for such litigation may be suspect as the concept that cash
can assuage grief is often hard to empathize with.
One possibility is that those who have lost an older institutionalized
relative feel the need to demonstrate that they care. It is a way of demonstrating
their concern. We must also accept the possibility, cynical though
it may seem, that health care workers and hospitals are natural targets of
litigation because they have supposedly deep pockets and probably carry
malpractice insurance.
After a certain point in time, the problems for the helping professionals
change from managing grief to managing chronic problems of money,
housing, and physical and /or mental illness.
HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS
The Nazi concentration camps were liberated in 1944, and their victims
are now a concern of geriatrics. Most survivors of Nazi concentration
camps are now dead, while those who are left are in their 80s. Those who
survived may be people of unusual toughness and resilience (Collins,
Burazeri, Gofin, & Kark, 2004), but they continue to have psychiatric symptoms
attributable to their experiences. Their utilization of psychiatric