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Healing the Minds of Children
The more I advocate for the needs of the children affected socially and emotionally by Hurricane Season 2005 in the Gulf Coast, the more I realize that the suffering is a shard of the broken mirror that reflects the lives of poor children as well as children of color. It was not a disaster hewn out of broken levees; but generations of disenfranchised minds, a lack of humane entitlements, and social accountability. This has probably been said several times over as a few of the “lessons learned.”
I find myself acknowledging other urban areas before pleading the needs of the children of the Gulf Coast. I am equally more distressed by cities such as Boston whose police department and local African-American ministers researched the problems of social unrest, murder, poverty and the emotional conditions that lead to social inhumanity not ten years ago. They now find themselves mired in the one of the highest murder rates in the nation ten years later.
I am challenged to figure out what are we not learning or what are we not applying or who is not participating in the dialogue. As a psychiatrist, I am more understanding of the complexity of social interactions between ethnicities, economic power bases and the socially disenfranchised. Moreover, I am more aware of the poker power plays and the indulgences for a scrap of gratis from such power. One knows more than the other; but both are co-dependent to create community.
Recently, I participated in a recent health fair for the Louisiana Children’s Defense Fund and found myself placed in a booth to validate and educate about emotional health issues. After two 30 minute blocks in the cubby,
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I decided to sit out among the rest of the visitors as one of the general public available to staff to refer interested persons. In the meanwhile, I participated in general conversation as a child psychiatrist willing to offer an informed perspective.
It has been a long journey from the refrain, “We don’t need no psychiatrist.” In an African-American colloquialism, this means we definitely do not need a psychiatrist as opposed to the double negative often inferred. I was relieved not to be rejected or ejected from the conversation.
I was more than tolerated and participants asked my thoughts and conceptualizations. I was open and urged a review of social constructs and such dilemma that are found in such novels as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Hopes and Impediments by the same author. Discussion in displacement may be the beginning of an unconscious and yet empowered comprehension of the power of information for the disenfranchised and the beginning of humane entitlement. At my counseling center on Canal Street in New Orleans, the children call out in their play, their class disruptions of displaced frustration, and precocious solicitations of friendship and more often physical contact. It is distressing when they struggle with their “I-dignity,” a phrase used by one of my 6 year old clients to describe his Corleonic struggle to choose between the life of the streets and being a superhero. The latter is possibly a sublimated defense of the former. Or, the recognition of early repetition compulsive behaviors that risk the community violence and premature sexual education of peers secondary to early childhood victimization. These challenges plus torn memories of screams, drug abuse, little or no food, dirty and torn clothing, or the visits that lead to unanticipated ends of relationships seemingly for a lifetime.
Adult narratives need to turn into adult accountability for safety, economic responsibility, social structure and reliable shelter. Blaming doesn’t change the facts, and transformation requires recognition that there is a problem.
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Charlotte Hutton, MD
Vice President: Clinical Programs in New Orleans
Three months after arriving in New Orleans, psychiatrist Charlotte N.P. Hutton, M.D, of the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital put years of training and experience to work helping Louisianans of all ages cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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If the biopsychosocial environments children live in do not change then they will repeat our past more intensely, more destructively, and without the chance to realize that they had a choice of something better.
Charlotte Hutton, MD
Canal Street Counseling, LLC
Physical Address
4205-07 Canal Street
New Orleans, LA 70119-5942
Mailing Address
P. O. Box 989
Kenner, LA 70093
Main Office Number
504.484.0457
Fax
504.484.5289
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