Many of ex-typhoon Halong's impacts are tangible and concrete, like damage to infrastructure and calls for village relocation. But some of the greatest impacts may be invisible. Jess Zhang, a freelance journalist writing for The Margin, recently co-published a story with KYUK about youth mental health in the wake of the storm. The piece, "Haunted by Halong," looks at data around disasters and examines potential solutions for the mental toll of climate-related trauma.
KYUK's Samantha Watson spoke with Zhang about what emerged in her reporting in Western Alaska, and what the path forward may look like for impacted youth.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KYUK (Samantha Watson): So for this story, you spoke with a lot of people up the chain. You spoke with Rep. Nellie Jimmie, as well as school counselors, and you also spoke with evacuated kids and young adults. In your reporting, where did you find what the officials and the data were saying, where did that overlap with what you were hearing from the youth directly?
Jess Zhang: Yeah, I think it was largely about the timeline of [this] kind of disaster recovery. So, based on what we know from the research about trauma responses post disaster, it can take some time for these emotional responses to manifest. So, in the initial stages, you know, post disaster, post [ex-typhoon] Halong, families might be focused on attending to their immediate needs, getting housing, getting food, applying for [Federal Emergency Management Agency] assistance. They have places to direct their energy towards, and there is, like, research of disasters globally that shows that many kind of mental health responses, such as anxiety, depression, [Post-traumatic stress disorder], appear in the roughly three to six months after a disaster occurs. So based on my interviews, this seems you know to be happening with youth in the region. So many of the social workers I spoke with through the school district talked about how they're seeing more trauma bubble up in these, like, months after the disaster that maybe right away when teens or kids were transferred to different school districts, they might not have been ready to talk about what they're feeling yet, or about nightmares they're experiencing, flashbacks they're experiencing linked to the disaster. But that, you know, six months after, it's starting to come up more, and they're able to kind of allude to it. Talk about trouble sleeping and symptoms of depression and anxiety, and kind of isolation they're feeling.
KYUK: One thing that I thought was super strong about your piece was you were able to zoom out a little bit and examine climate related impacts on mental health, including rates of suicide, across other regions of the world. What parallels does the impact of ex-typhoon Halong have with some of these other global events?
Zhang: Research that I found especially helpful for this reporting in Bangladesh with teens that were living in flood-prone areas that showed that these teens exhibited significantly higher rates of anxiety and depression than those in low flood regions. And the reason I found this especially useful in informing my reporting is that it's not just how long that, you know, youth in villages like Kwigillingok are facing in terms of climate threats. Many of them have lived through and experienced kind of escalating flooding in recent years, not just fall storms, but also other types of, you know, spring flooding and erosion. Youth have been experiencing kind of repeat and persistent climate events, and it kind of structures their day to day, their school year, the way they think about seasons. And so in Bangladesh, at least, the study found that the flooding not only contributed to these mental health impacts, but also kind of a sense of cognitive overload, which is what researchers called it, which kind of limits young people's ability to plan for the future because they're constantly preoccupied with these kind of even smaller scale disasters and interruptions to their day to day. And so when I spoke with young people in my interviews, many of them expressed kind of similar feelings of apathy, of numbness that are making it difficult to not only move past last October, but also to kind of solidify their outlook for the future.
KYUK: Your piece also looked at solutions and ways that the region is looking to support impacted youth with mental health. You touched on [Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation's] Calricaraq program, as well as the way that [Lower Kuskokwim School District] counselors are approaching aid. Can you tell me what stood out to you?
Zhang: In some ways, rural healthcare gaps are, you know, endemic across the country and across regions. But from school counselors, you know, Rep. Jimmie and mental health advocates alike, I heard that there's a particular lack in terms of crisis response options for villages, which can result in, you know, law enforcement response to mental health crises or, you know, wait times of up to, you know, six months for folks to see providers. And so this was echoed by youth who told me about, you know, not knowing where to go to get support, especially for kind of not just the crisis of, you know, when you're in crisis, but also, you know, just to talk about and process kind of what happened to them. I also wanted the piece to, like you said, mention solutions and not to dismiss all the great work that's happening in the region because you know why. [Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation], school social workers are doing a ton of frontline work with the resources they have, and the district is implementing trauma training for all their staff this summer in preparation for the fall school year. And Indigenous-led programs like Calricaraq exist, and are very built out, and have a lot of kind of resources or research and backing behind them, but they just need to be further invested in, or maybe further supported in these efforts.
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