Imani Tafari-Ama | Hurricane Melissa didn’t end — It moved inside us

When the winds died down and the floodwaters receded, what remained was not only broken infrastructure, but broken routines, broken security and broken peace of mind. And yet, our recovery discourse still treats mental health as secondary, optional, or charitable. This is a profound mistake.

Because Hurricane Melissa is not only a climate disaster, it is a public mental health emergency layered onto a history of structural neglect.

Public mental health teaches us something essential: distress after disaster is not a personal weakness. It is a predictable response to loss, displacement, uncertainty, and abandonment. When homes are destroyed, schools remain closed, livelihoods vanish, and timelines for recovery remain unclear, anxiety and depression are not anomalies — they are signals.

Signals that systems have failed to protect.

In the wake of Hurricane Melissa, we are witnessing prolonged psychological stress — particularly among women, unemployed men, caregivers, children, elders and frontline workers. Families are living in limbo. Children are learning in disrupted environments. Teachers and health workers are absorbing trauma while being asked to carry others.

This is not resilience.

This is endurance under strain.

And endurance without repair becomes trauma.

From a reparatory justice perspective, we must name an uncomfortable truth: Melissa exposed old wounds. As Jamaica moves from emergency response to recovery after Hurricane Melissa, the nation must confront an overlooked reality: climate disasters are also public mental health crises, rooted in long-standing structural neglect and requiring justice-centred repair.

Hurricane Melissa is now spoken of in the past tense. The storm has passed, officials say. Recovery is underway. But, for thousands of Jamaicans — particularly in the most affected parishes and rural communities — the disaster is far from over. It has simply moved from the landscape into the body, the household, and the collective psyche.

While public attention has rightly focused on repairing roads, restoring electricity, and reopening schools and clinics, far less has been said about the psychological aftermath of the hurricane. Anxiety, grief, exhaustion, and deep uncertainty now shape daily life for many families. This is not incidental damage. It is what happens when disaster recovery is stripped of a public mental health and justice framework.

Public mental health teaches us that emotional distress after catastrophe is not a personal failing or an unfortunate side effect. It is a predictable social outcome. When people lose homes, livelihoods, schools, routines, and a sense of safety all at once, psychological distress is the rational response. The question is not why people are struggling, but why our recovery systems so often pretend this struggle is invisible.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, mental health support has been fragmented and largely reactive. Communities are encouraged to be “resilient” without being given the conditions that make resilience possible. Families are expected to absorb loss and uncertainty privately, while recovery planning proceeds as though rebuilding structures alone will restore well-being.

This expectation is deeply unjust.

From a reparatory justice perspective, Hurricane Melissa did not create vulnerability — it exposed it. Long before the storm arrived, many communities were already living with chronic underinvestment in housing, education, healthcare and disaster preparedness. Mental health services were overstretched. Climate adaptation was uneven across parishes. Social protection systems were fragile. The hurricane merely made visible the consequences of long-standing policy choices.

What we are now witnessing is cumulative trauma: a disaster layered onto historical neglect; uncertainty layered onto inequality. When recovery timelines remain unclear and support is inconsistent, distress does not fade — it deepens.

Children and young people are among those most affected. Disrupted schooling, damaged facilities, and unstable learning environments undermine not only education but emotional development and a sense of safety. Caregivers — particularly women — are carrying an enormous burden, managing family survival while navigating loss, displacement, and financial strain. Teachers, health workers, and community responders are experiencing burnout and secondary trauma even as they are praised for their dedication.

This is not resilience. It is endurance under pressure. And endurance without repair eventually breaks.

True recovery cannot be measured solely in kilometres of road repaired or buildings reconstructed. Those indicators matter, but they tell only part of the story. Jamaica’s recovery must also be measured by whether people feel safe again, whether children can learn without fear, and whether communities trust that they have not been abandoned once more.

A justice-centred approach to disaster recovery would look fundamentally different. It would treat mental health as a core pillar of national recovery, not an optional add-on. It would fund long-term, culturally grounded psychosocial support rather than short-term crisis interventions. It would recognise schools, churches, cultural spaces, and community organisations as sites of healing, not merely service delivery points. It would support frontline workers with care structures, not just applause.

Most importantly, reparatory recovery would acknowledge that climate disasters in historically marginalised regions create a mental health debt — a debt accumulated when harm outpaces repair. Ignoring that debt does not make it disappear. It transfers the cost to families, to children, and ultimately to future generations.

Hurricane Melissa has taught Jamaica an uncomfortable lesson: climate disasters do not end when the storm passes. They lodge themselves in bodies, in relationships, and in collective memory. If we rebuild without addressing this reality, we guarantee deeper harm when the next storm arrives.

The question before us is not whether we can afford to centre mental health in disaster recovery. It is whether we can afford the long-term social cost of pretending that recovery is only about bricks and asphalt.

Because storms may pass — but unhealed trauma does not.

Imani Tafari-Ama, PhD, is a Pan-African advocate and gender and development specialist. Send feedback to i.tafariama@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com.