Why Do Some Hurricane Survivors Thrive After Disaster?

Short Wave

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🗓️ 29 September 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

You’ve probably heard of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. But what about its counterpart, post-traumatic growth?
The term was coined in the 90s to describe the positive psychological growth that researchers documented in people who had been through traumatic or highly stressful life events. Psychologists and sociologists conducting long-range studies on survivors of Hurricane Katrina – which hit 20 years ago and remains one of the most devastating natural disasters to hit the US – are continuing to learn more about it.

So how do you measure post-traumatic growth? Can it co-exist with PTSD? NPR mental health correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee explains what scientists have found so far … and how it could help shape disaster relief efforts in the future.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Is the American dream a scam?
0:03.1	Allegated Tears, a new memoir by Edgar Gomez, tackles that question.
0:08.5	Who are the people who are benefiting the most from this idea that we need to keep working,
0:13.5	that we need to keep, you know, our heads low, that we need to keep going out and risking our lives?
0:18.2	You can hear more about that on Code Switch from NPR wherever you get your podcasts.
0:24.5	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:28.9	Hey, shortwavers.
0:30.2	John Hamilton here in the guest toast chair.
0:33.1	And joining me today is Ritu Chatterjee.
0:35.2	She covers mental health for NPR.
0:36.8	Hi, Ritu.
0:37.5	Hey, John. Ritu, I know you've been reporting on mental health of people who live through
0:42.1	Hurricane Katrina. It has now been 20 years since that storm devastated New Orleans. What have
0:48.0	researchers learned about the survivors? Well, you know, the one thing that stood out to me was how
0:53.4	much the research is revealed about human resilience.
0:56.7	Researchers have really been able to see what this looks like after following more than a couple thousand survivors for nearly a dozen years.
1:03.7	And one of those researchers is David Abramson.
1:06.5	He's a social and behavioral sciences professor at NYU.
1:09.6	Around the 13, 14- year mark after the hurricane,
1:14.3	people had begun to have a sense that they had come to some sort of stability in their lives.
1:22.6	Okay, 13 to 14 years. I mean, developing resiliency is apparently not a quick process. It can take time.
1:30.4	Yeah, and also remember Katrina was one of the most devastating natural disasters in the U.S.
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