Life after landfall: How childbirth in a hurricane led to postdisaster mental health discoveries

Dr. Meri Davlasheridze, associate professor of environmental and hazard economics at the College of Marine Sciences and Maritime Studies at Texas A&M University at Galveston, has not only studied these aftereffects but endured them herself.

In August 2017, Davlasheridze and her husband were preparing to welcome their daughter into the world. Her parents were visiting Galveston from the country of Georgia, and she was scheduled to give birth at a League City hospital on Aug. 28. Although her pregnancy was high risk and required the use of blood-thinning medication throughout, she and her family were excited about the joyous event. Then the skies darkened and an unstoppable force of nature arrived at their doorstep.

Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast on Aug. 25 and moved inland, stalling over Southeast Texas. Tropical-storm-force winds downed tree limbs and knocked out crucial infrastructure. Multiple days of torrential downpours overwhelmed bayous, creeks and drainage systems, causing unprecedented flooding that covered low-lying neighborhoods with several feet of water, turned roads into rivers and necessitated thousands of evacuations and rescues.

“When the rain started, my husband and I decided to evacuate from Galveston and rent a hotel near the hospital to ensure flooding wouldn’t affect us,” Davlasheridze said. “We didn’t anticipate that it would rain continuously for several days — and even more heavily in League City.”

The anxious family then experienced the storm from their League City hotel room. The impacts of the natural disaster quickly made supplies scarce, and the hotel stopped preparing meals. Davlasheridze recalls how her husband scoured nearby gas stations — the only businesses that remained open at the time — for crackers and other edible supplies. At one point during the ordeal, her parents were essentially confined to the hotel room and subsisting on packets of oatmeal.

My dissertation and research were on hurricanes and flood impacts, and I never imagined I would experience them firsthand. That’s when you realize just how much suffering and distress people go through.

After the first stormy night in the hotel, Davlasheridze called the hospital only to discover that it had canceled all but critical procedures, jeopardizing her scheduled delivery. Because her pregnancy was high risk and required blood-thinning medication to ensure her baby’s safety, the hospital agreed to go through with her appointment — on one condition.

“We were told they could make an exception if my doctor could get to the hospital,” Davlasheridze said. “Thankfully, she managed to come. Her street was flooded, but a kind neighbor with a truck gave her a ride.”

Davlasheridze gave birth to a healthy baby girl on Aug. 28, as planned; however, the challenges associated with having a baby during a historically significant natural disaster didn’t end with the successful delivery. The hospital wouldn’t discharge the new mother and her daughter until it was assured that they had a safe, dry home to return to. Blocked and flooded roads stymied her husband’s first attempt to drive back to Galveston, but he completed the journey the next day and confirmed that their home was safe and habitable.

“The stress of this experience lingered afterward and was compounded by the big changes that come with a first baby,” Davlasheridze shared. “We weathered through it, thankfully, and were told that babies born during disasters are powerful and resilient. We see that strength in our daughter every day.”

Finding inspiration during disaster

Even now, Davlasheridze uses the word “surreal” to describe surviving one of the natural disasters she studies.

“My dissertation and research were on hurricanes and flood impacts, and I never imagined I would experience them firsthand,” Davlasheridze said. “That’s when you realize just how much suffering and distress people go through. Hospitals were locked down, there was no food available, the streets were flooded. It was a traumatic experience. It’s hard to believe I lived through that.”

According to Davlasheridze, that harrowing experience and the increasingly frequent reports of record-breaking natural disasters now fuel her drive to study and improve postdisaster recovery. After earning her Ph.D. in agricultural, environmental and regional economics in 2013, she found her place at Texas A&M-Galveston among other powerhouse researchers — some of whom she even cited and corresponded with while pursuing her degree. One such researcher is Dr. Sam Brody, who serves as director of the Institute for a Disaster Resilient Texas (IDRT).

“He was a very established professor even at that time, and I knew of his line of work because I cited some of his papers,” Davlasheridze said. “As a Ph.D. student, I reached out to him for some datasets and things like that. And when I was reading the description of the job, I was feeling like this is where I fit!”

Intersection of mental health and postdisaster recovery

With her research, Davlasheridze is pushing the envelope of how we understand the intersection between mental health and postdisaster economic recovery. Her studies have collectively uncovered a downward spiral that gridlocks postdisaster recovery: Psychological trauma and financial strain feed into each other after a disaster, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that slows recovery and destabilizes entire economic regions.

Clues to this underlying cycle’s existence stood out to Davlasheridze as she studied the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005. She found that more than eight years after the storm, New Orleans had suffered a whopping 33% gross regional product loss from the out-migration of skilled workers alone. Reaching this jaw-dropping number required her first to simulate the city as if it hadn’t been affected by Katrina. By making that “business as usual” economic model of New Orleans and then applying the city’s actual recorded loss of skilled workers to the simulation, the drastic difference in economic production became apparent. Although this finding was significant, she suspected more elusive social factors were at play.

Davlasheridze needed a method to measure these subtle factors scientifically. To accurately correlate elusive social variables with complex economic or environmental phenomena — in this case, to link mental health to natural disasters — she turned to econometric models. These statistical models enable researchers to “use data that measures different socioeconomic and environmental aspects to explain the variations of mental health,” she said. “For us to isolate the effects of disasters on mental health, we have to make sure there are no omitted factors that also affect mental health. Then we can credibly claim causality.”

With econometric models in her arsenal, Davlasheridze conducted a rigorous investigation of the underlying dynamic she suspected. In a study published in Social Indicators Research, she used calibrated econometric models to great effect, finding a statistically significant association between natural disasters and increases in poor mental health days — days on which people self-report that their mental health is not good because of depression, stress or various emotional problems. She would soon discover that these poor mental health days affect more than just individuals; they ripple through communities, reducing labor force participation and job productivity, increasing opioid addiction and negatively influencing a wide range of socioeconomic outcomes.

After establishing solid ties between natural disasters and an increase in poor mental health days, Davlasheridze conducted a follow-up study to determine whether these poor mental health days manifested economically — and in what ways. “We saw that income growth is negatively affected by growing mental health problems,” she said about the study. “This is largely associated with absences, lack of productivity and lack of motivation that people might have — some even drop out of the labor market entirely.”

Finally, the once scattered clues had become a clear picture: Natural disasters have lingering effects on mental health, and that poor mental health tangibly affects economies and cyclically thwarts recovery. The time it takes for people to recover from the physical damage caused by natural disasters further compounds the economic impact of poor mental health days. For example, after natural disasters, personal property is often heavily damaged, and critical infrastructure such as roads and hospitals may be closed — realities that Davlasheridze became abundantly aware of through her childbirth experience.

Community support can positively impact mental health

Although her scientific investigations identified the underlying problem, Davlasheridze refused to rest until she studied effective solutions for addressing the lasting trauma that she and many others face after natural disasters. By adapting her econometric models to incorporate a “social capital” variable — based on the number of churches, food banks and nonprofit organizations in an area — she discovered a clear trend: Communities with stronger social support networks experience fewer poor mental health days.

“Our findings show that in the counties where there are more community-based entities, such as churches and community support organizations, they generally have fewer poor mental health days,” Davlasheridze explained. “Social support provides a way of counteracting some of the distress they experience after disasters.”

This discovery gave Davlasheridze a powerful solution to champion. While stressing that people should always heed disaster warnings, secure and insure their homes, and document property damage promptly, she highlights social support as a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of postdisaster mental health recovery. “During disasters, just support one another,” she said. “Open doors, provide food and shelter — it all really helps with mental health. It helps people to realize they are not alone, they’re not forgotten and their community cares for them.”

Beyond urging people to help one another, Davlasheridze has broader recommendations. She encourages the public to advocate for more government information campaigns surrounding disaster recovery and for policymakers to engage closely with scientists when making decisions that can permanently affect lives. As a Texas A&M-Galveston associate professor and IDRT faculty fellow, she works alongside Brody and other researchers she once cited, contributing to a variety of potentially lifesaving projects. For example, she is currently aiding in the development of online tools that will warn buyers and renters about disaster-prone homes and areas before they move into them.

Davlasheridze’s story is one of birth within chaos and a vivid example of how one researcher’s personal experience and scientific curiosity can lead to transformative discoveries and solutions. She and her contributions to postdisaster recovery embody Texas A&M University’s deep commitment to serving communities and building a brighter, safer world. Nearly a decade after giving birth during Hurricane Harvey, she stands together with her Texas A&M colleagues as a powerful force for good that weathers every storm and shows countless others how to do the same.