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Depression and PTSD among Houston Residents who Experienced Hurricane Harvey and COVID-19: Implications for Urban Areas Affected by Multiple Disasters

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Abstract

Little is known about the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other major disasters on mental health. Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast in 2017, resulting in substantial costs, significant levels of displacement, and approximately 100 deaths, and was followed in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic. We randomly sampled 1167 Houstonians from 88 designated super-neighborhoods and surveyed them about their demographics, event-specific traumas and stressors, and symptoms of current depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We estimated the prevalence of depression (5.8%) and PTSD (12.6%) more than three years after Hurricane Harvey, and assessed the relative influence of event-specific stressors and traumas on current mental health. Overall, we observed evidence for two key findings that are salient for residents of urban environments in the context of multiple disasters. First, stressors were primary influences on depression, whereas both stressors and traumas influenced PTSD. Second, the influences of stressors and traumas on depression and PTSD symptoms faded with time.

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Data Availability

Study data is available upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the NIH, Grant # R01MH119193 (HC, KR, SL, SG). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Gregory H. Cohen, Ruochen Wang, Salma M. Abdalla & Sandro Galea

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Laura Sampson

  3. Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA

    Sarah R. Lowe

  4. Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Catherine K. Ettman

  5. Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Gregory A. Wellenius

  6. Department of Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Howard Cabral

  7. College of Nursing, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

    Kenneth Ruggiero

  8. Dean’s Office, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Sandro Galea

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  1. Gregory H. Cohen
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  2. Ruochen Wang
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Correspondence to Gregory H. Cohen.

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Cohen, G.H., Wang, R., Sampson, L. et al. Depression and PTSD among Houston Residents who Experienced Hurricane Harvey and COVID-19: Implications for Urban Areas Affected by Multiple Disasters. J Urban Health 100, 860–869 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-023-00767-2

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