By Randi Mitev, Chief Operating Officer, The Center for Mind-Body Medicine
When the wildfires tore through Eaton and the surrounding communities of Greater Los Angeles late last year, they left behind more than ashes. When the flood waters overwhelmed Texas Hill Country with devastating speed last summer, they swept away more than homes. When Hurricane Helen ravaged Asheville, it shattered more than a quiet mountain town’s infrastructure. Each of these catastrophes made headlines for the damage that could be seen and measured: the lives lost, roads washed away, downed power lines, and structures destroyed. But alongside the visible devastation, there was the invisible as well: sleepless nights, panic attacks, grief that has no discernible end. These are the injuries that don’t show up in damage assessments, and they are the ones our current disaster response protocol is least prepared to address.
The Unseen Impact of Natural Disasters
Psychologists tell us natural disasters can trigger long-term anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. Still, our disaster response systems overwhelmingly prioritize physical recovery: clearing debris, restoring power, reopening schools. But emotional and mental recovery is just as essential for a community to truly heal — and without it, physical rebuilding alone falls short.
A recent report from the STAT Network, led by Brown University’s School of Public Health and supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, underscores this gap. Of 45 states and territories surveyed, only 5% of public health leaders said they feel “very prepared” to handle the health impacts of extreme weather. Mental health struggles, the report notes, are among the least measured and least supported consequences of disasters, even though they ripple through households, workplaces, and entire communities long after the storms pass.
As the COO of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM), I’ve seen this up close. In communities hit by floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, we meet people whose nervous systems are still in fight-or-flight months — or even years — later. Sleep is disrupted. Tempers are short. Bodies ache from stress that never quite lets go. These are not personal weaknesses; they are predictable physiological responses to trauma. And with the right tools, healing from trauma, building resilience, and reclaiming a sense of safety are entirely possible.
Months after these natural disasters, debris may have been cleared and homes may be in the process of being rebuilt, but the invisible damage, the toll on minds and bodies, remains. As one community leader who recently completed our Professional Training program told us: “We can rebuild the houses, but if we don’t rebuild the people, the community never really comes back.”
The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s Approach
For more than three decades, our organization has helped communities recover from trauma by teaching practical, evidence-based skills that restore calm and create connection. After Hurricane Harvey, we partnered with Houston-based organizations to train clinicians, counselors, and community leaders who went on to reach more than 10,000 residents. In Sonoma County, California, following the 2017 wildfires, we helped launch a local resilience collaborative that brought mind-body skills training to hundreds of service providers — resulting in measurable drops in depression and increases in hope. In the summer of 2019 in Puerto Rico, we partnered with Foundation for a Better Puerto Rico to bring our training program to more than 70 service providers and community leaders from the health, mental health, social welfare, and education sectors, ensuring that our model could be readily integrated into existing programs, becoming a foundation for innovative, sustainable, island-wide primary mental health care. In Baton Rouge, a community already facing enormous challenges due to high levels of poverty and racial tension, we’ve brought our model of trauma relief and resilience building to high-need communities, demonstrating a healing model that is scalable and replicable — because disaster response must address mental and emotional needs, not just tactical ones.
The approach is simple, accessible, and transformative. We teach people about the science behind mind-body medicine and how to use techniques like breathing, movement, and meditation to navigate trauma, chronic stress, and anxiety. These techniques are practiced in small Mind-Body Skills Groups that offer therapeutic support and safe spaces to share, reflect, and connect. They’re grounded in neuroscience and designed to be shared: a teacher can use them with students, a nurse with patients, a parent with their children, a first responder for themselves. Healing begins within individuals but multiplies outward, becoming community resilience in action.
As more Americans express concern about the increasing frequency of extreme weather — and question whether society is prepared to respond — emotional resilience is emerging as a critical form of infrastructure. Just as we invest in levees, power grids, and early-warning systems, we must also invest in our capacity to recover emotionally and psychologically. This means dedicating disaster-response funding to early mental health interventions, embedding trauma-informed care into FEMA and state emergency response protocols, and treating psychological recovery as essential, not optional. Training local leaders in stress reduction and group support techniques can make these resources as routine as first aid kits.
Physical reconstruction is visible and measurable. Emotional reconstruction is quieter, but just as vital. The next phase of disaster preparedness must recognize that until we rebuild people — not just places — recovery remains unfinished.
Randi Mitev, MA is Chief Operating Officer at The Center for Mind-Body Medicine.
