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Huffstutler: If you ask people in New Orleans, “who has done the best job of helping to rebuild,” most will say church groups. My secretary’s mother, for instance, was in her yard trying to clean up one day when a young person came down the street, saw her, and immediately picked up a rake. In a couple of hours, her yard was completely clean. She said “Thank you, who are you?” and the kid responded “I’m from Arkansas. My church group has come down here to help out.”

A group from North Carolina has come and set up trailers where they sleep at night after working all day. The work being done by all these college kids isn’t overtly religious—but they are religious, and that’s why they’re here.

P.H.: It’s been reported that New Orleans has seen a spike in suicides since Katrina. How does McFarland train parish nurses to counsel congregants that are suicide risks?

Huffstutler: The trick with suicide is to take it seriously and to identify it. We train our nurses to try to work with a congregant until he or she is willing to sign a “non-suicide agreement.” It might sound silly, but it works. People who make this commitment won’t kill themselves. And if someone refuses to agree to it, that’s a good sign that more serious action needs to be taken.

You find depression everywhere you look in New Orleans these days. It’s like everyone in the city has two jobs—your regular job and getting your life in order. The community in general is depressed. I once heard a professor refer to something he called “no-end grief.” You think it will get better, but it just goes on and on.

Secular mental health interventions aren’t enough to deal with New Orleans’s current problems. Our police department, for instance, has been devastated by the storm, and has suffered a number of suicides. Police tend to have a certain aversion to traditional mental health services—they’d much rather talk to a chaplain than to a psychiatrist.

P.H.: Katrina must have displaced a fair number of clergymen as well. Where have displaced clergy gone?

Huffstutler: I know of a number of preachers who preach one Sunday in New Orleans, the next Sunday in Baton Rouge, and the next Sunday in Houston, because that’s where their congregation is. A lot of pastors are struggling with the realization that their congregation may not exist anymore. A lot of people are leaving. I lost one of my best staff members because both her church and her mother’s home were destroyed. She was as connected to the community as anyone I knew, but her mother and her church were her two support systems. Without those, she left.