KATRINA.  Four years later - and the hurricane and its aftermath still affects our daily lives.

What about you?

As mental health professionals, we heard about Katrina from our patients and clients, in conversations with friends and acquaintances, from politicians and newscasters.  Yet, despite the ongoing dialogue, there was little discussion of the impact of Katrina on clinicians, “chronic responders” dealing with the chronic strain of shared trauma.

That is changing.

The FAR Fund Project is a New Orleans-based program exploring Hurricane Katrina’s effects on New Orleans therapists and therapeutic practice. It was designed by and for clinicians. Why have such a project? Because we all were affected by Katrina. We want to understand what this means for us as psychotherapists working with survivors of the storm, and for the work we do.

We want to include you, the local mental health provider, in the discussion.
  
The FAR Fund Project is open to New Orleans psychotherapists of all disciplines and theoretical orientations.  Our mission is two-fold:
• to offer support and concrete help to local mental health clinicians, and
• to develop a psychodynamic model to better understand how shared trauma affects therapists and therapy.  

The FAR Fund Project is sponsored by the New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center. It is made possible by a generous grant from The FAR Fund.  Through this project we hope to unite and revitalize clinician communities following large-scale disasters wherever they occur… starting in New Orleans.
  
The FAR Fund is a private fund that supports programs helping children, families and communities in need.  Established in 2001, it is located in New York City.  For more information: www.farfund.org.

The New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center (NOBPC) is a comunity of clinicians, scholars and others interested in the diverse elaborations and contemporary applications of Freud’s original theories.  The Center offers training programs in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, as well as seminars, discussion groups and research opportunities of both practical and theoretical nature. The Center’s programs are open to psychiatrists, psychologists, general practitioners, nurses, teachers, social workers, students and other health care providers, and the community.  For more information: call 504-899-5815 or visit www.nobpc.org.