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Fishermen's families line up outside a Catholic Charities aid station. Families affected by the spill are at an increased risk of psychological trauma. (Geoff Livingston via flickr)
Inside a cool, shaded old plantation house in St. Bernard, Louisiana, we're all breathing in our favorite color and blowing out gray smoke.
This relaxation exercise is brought to a roomful of women by the St. Bernard Project, a nonprofit founded in 2006 to provide rebuilding services to Katrina-ravaged St. Bernard Parish as well as offer "psychological rebuilding" through its wellness and mental-health center. Since the oil spill started, the organization has been looking to vastly expand its services to meet the area's latest mental-health crisis: the unrelenting depression falling on families living and working on the Gulf Coast. Everyone here except the three clinic workers and me is a fisherman's wife.
from Mac McClelland's "Depression, Abuse, Suicide: Fishermen's Wives Face Post-spill Trauma"
Mother Jones, June 25, 2010
go to an interview with McClelland
Mac McClelland has won the June Sidney award for her Mother Jones story "Depression, Abuse, Suicide: Fishermen's Wives Face Post-Spill Trauma" on the mental health challenges facing families affected by the spill.