Donna Ganier smiled brightly. It was nine months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her New Orleans home and just days before the start of the new storm season.

She waved at 6-year-old Anthony Shelton, one of 42 kindergartners attired in gold caps and gowns for a graduation ceremony at Norbert Rillieux Elementary School in Waggaman, La., a rural suburb of New Orleans.

Anthony, son of a close friend, waved back. "He calls me his 'Aunt T,' " Ms. Ganier said proudly.

Six months ago, this trained social worker was emotionally distressed. She contemplated suicide and suffered anxiety attacks, depression and nightmares.

Mental health experts say such symptoms are more common in Louisiana since last year's hurricanes – perhaps more than 260,000 people newly afflicted by anxiety disorder, depression and substance abuse, according to a recent state report. The increase in demand for services has overwhelmed emergency rooms and behavioral service providers.

In the New Orleans area, there are reported increases in drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, domestic violence and suicide, despite a sharp drop in population. City police officers – one in five was recently diagnosed with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder – say they are handling more calls involving mental patients who are "off their meds."

And officials are worried about this storm season, which will probably bring more evacuations and disruptions of normal life even if there is not another hurricane.

"We are on the leading edge of an emotional and psychological tsunami that threatens the health and the recovery of our community," said John King, executive director of the nonprofit Council for Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

Katrina destroyed everything Ms. Ganier owned, including family heirlooms and her prized college diploma – a master's in social work, she said. And people she knew were scattered: her family, friends and church congregation.

Overwhelmed, she says, she lost her job as director of a nonprofit program for the elderly when she didn't return to New Orleans. The panic attacks she had known before Katrina returned at Thanksgiving and intensified by Christmas, she said. She recalls spending both holidays alone, despondent and considering news reports of evacuees who had ended their lives. "I started thinking about suicide," she said.

Help came unexpectedly; she attended a free health fair at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans: "One of the doctors asked me how I was doing, and I started crying." Ms. Ganier now takes antidepressant drugs and has found other support through advocacy groups. She also has found a part-time job.

But finding help for such anxieties isn't easy in New Orleans.

Most of the 15 hospitals in the city are still closed, and mental health services are severely limited.

Mental health professionals left behind are alert for signs of despair and heightened anxiety during what continues to be a critical eight- to 10-month period since a major disaster. During this time, experts say, people begin to realize how long reconstruction may take.

And New Orleans continues to be a dreary place, with thousands of abandoned cars and mounds of storm debris and garbage.

"The city is still pretty destroyed," said Dr. Janet Johnson, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at Tulane University. "I do think everyone in New Orleans has undergone significant stress and continues to. It's difficult to live here. I am seeing depression just among family and friends and everyday people you run into."

Local psychiatrist Deagan Dansereau put it this way: "Living in New Orleans right now is a risk factor for depression and anxiety."

Psychologist Linda Floyd says officials and the news media need to take care not to foster a "collective panic" at the first sign of a storm in the Gulf of Mexico. And Dr. Brobson Lutz, a former city health director, warns that too many evacuations can promote "hurricane fatigue," leaving the public too exhausted to flee actual danger.

In St. Bernard Parish, which lost more than two-thirds of its 67,000 residents in the storms, parish Coroner Bryan Bertucci said he's prescribed antidepressants for up to 35 percent of the about 200 patients he sees weekly as a family doctor.

"These are normal people in our society," Dr. Bertucci said. "But because of the loss of family, friends, jobs, homes, church and community, they are not able to cope."

The majority of parish residents now live in FEMA trailers, he says. Many are isolated in storm-damaged neighborhoods.

"The biggest problem is that people are running out of money," he said. "The reality that it is going to take years instead of months to recover is beginning to set in."

After last week's kindergarten graduation, Ms. Ganier said she hoped that telling her story would encourage other Katrina survivors to get help. "One thing I've learned from the storm is to enjoy each day that I have, and I have been doing that, because tomorrow is not promised," she said, and smiled.