Despair and anxiety: Puerto Rico's 'living emergency' as a mental health crisis unfolds
For the first 36 hours after Hurricane Maria, five-year-old Keydiel and his mother Shaina were trapped by the toppled trees that blocked the doors to their home in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico.
Eventually, neighbors cleared the sturdy tamarind trees, cutting by hand because there was no electricity. The mother and son emerged to find an island devoured by 155mph winds and harsh rains.
Their immediate concerns were physical – finding food and water – but bubbling below were anxieties and trauma that would endure for months.
“It was difficult to find himself [Keydiel] in a situation where he didn’t have a way out. It was difficult for me,” Shaina told the Guardian through an interpreter, while sitting at a table outside her son’s classroom. “As a mom, I was very stressed out and I got anxious because I wasn’t able to solve things so quickly. I felt impotent.”
Keydiel’s school sits just below hillside forests that are finally a dense, dark green after Maria twisted them into a tangling mess of trees stripped of leaves and bark. This sign of recovery – one Puerto Ricans craved after their green island turned brown in the storm – is betrayed by house-sized patches of mud from landslides and the remains of pulverized structures.
Down in the valley, where crisp, salt-flicked coastal air drifts in from the Caribbean Sea just over the hills, Keydiel’s school had survived the storm. It was
