For those with post-traumatic stress disorder — nightmares, angry outbursts, suicidal thoughts and flashbacks are symptoms of time spent in war zones. Those symptoms give victims no peace. 

But now, the symptoms are being experienced by school age children in urban Louisiana. 

According to a study by the Institute of Women & Ethnic Studies, 60% of children in New Orleans experience PTSD. That rate is four times the national average.  

So, how did the Big Easy — a city known for fun, jazz and Mardi Gras — create an environment similar to a war zone? 

Niya Cordier and her husband, Jason Jackson, say for their family, it all began with Hurricane Katrina. 

One of the largest and most destructive storms in U.S. history, killed over 1,800 and left behind $125 billion in damage. 

"Katrina was a catastrophic event," Cordier said. "It traumatized my entire family."

She says her 10-year-old son, Will, saw things no child should experience.  

SEE MORE: Habitat For Humanity: Rebuilding New Orleans After Katrina

"My own son got to see dead bodies, people being shot, people being shoved to the ground, harmed, hurt, fighting over buses, fighting over food, fighting over the little bit that was being looted, waiting for days for someone to come and he was 10," Cordier continued. "What did they expect that would do to all of these kids?"

After Katrina came another trauma—gun violence.  

Samuel Chesterfiled is a longtime licensed professional counselor who's helped school-aged children through PTSD.

"Seeing my neighbor or the stranger murdered in my yard, I see the blood. That's traumatic," he said. 

Chesterfield says it's common for children living in urban areas like New Orleans to experience PTSD. "Natural disasters, traumatic events, abuse — and that's both physical and emotional trauma. That could be the death of a loved one, a chronic illness, that could be cancer, a traumatic event, a car wreck, violence, all of those things play a major, major role and especially when you live in an inner city," he said.

SEE MORE: How Has Our Approach To Treating PTSD Evolved?

With the support of family, Will graduated from high school and made it to college. But a decision to return home for the summer, sent his life into a tailspin. 

"He was playing ball one night …. A guy pulls out a gun and starts shooting," Cordier said. "Those few little words changed my life...'Ma, I got shot' ... The events of what happened when my son was shot was like a domino effect for us."

After the shooting, Cordier says her son turned into a completely different person. He changed his name, carried guns, and dropped out of college. 

The shooting left this family in shock. And triggered PTSD in his younger 13-year-old sister, Jayce. Newsy is not showing her face to protect her privacy. 

"I'm scared," she said. "It's like a thought [that] if I make eye contact with the wrong person and I hold it for a little too long, something bad might happen."

Jayce now refuses to go through that neighborhood of New Orleans where her big brother nearly lost his life.  

"It makes me nervous and it makes me ancy if I'm being honest," she said. "It's like, an unsettling feeling."

Summer months in New Orleans not only bring heat, but also violence.  

In 2022, New Orleans topped the list of cities with the highest increase in homicide rates, according to Wallet Hub. Mental health experts say it's due to a lack of activities, internships and jobs for teens. 

The Center for Resilience was born out of a desperate need to help children in the city. For the last eight years, executive director Elizabeth Marcell Williams has been a provider. 

"Over a period of time in the years after Hurricane Katrina, we saw a gradual shutdown of state-run programming for children and adolescents with mental health needs," she said. "Around 2012 or so, schools in the city began articulating a need and saying, 'We have kids in our building right now who are crying out for more intensive support than we are equipped to be able to provide and it's manifesting in aggressive behaviors and property destruction and, you know, children are not being able to learn.'"

They are now the city's only therapeutic day program, shining a light to help kids find their way out of darkness. The nonprofit provides counseling and enough academics to help students graduate.  

"On average, when we look at our success rate, 83% of the kids who have come through our program and gone back to their home school have been successful in that home school," Williams said.

Cordier says such a program might have helped her family. Instead, she and her husband moved to the suburbs of New Orleans for protection of their mental health, and peace. 

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MILWAUKEE —

Ahead of Halloween festivities, some bars in Milwaukee are banning Jeffery Dahmer Halloween costumes to avoid bringing back trauma to a town that suffered from Dahmer's violent murders for decades.

Two bars, D.I.X. and This Is It, both posted on Facebook ahead of their Halloween parties and costume contests that Jeffrey Dahmer costumes will be prohibited inside their establishments.

This Is It shared the following statement with sister station WISN 12 News:

"Even though Dahmer was not a customer at This is It!, the bar has been getting phone calls ever since the Netflix series aired because we are the oldest LGBTQ+ bar in Milwaukee, and in the Midwest. This, coupled with the popularity of the series and people on social media toying with the idea that somehow dressing up like this evil person would be a good idea, led the bar to make a statement that such hateful and disrespectful costumes will not be allowed in our space."

Netflix recently released a limited 10-episode series on Dahmer.

D.I.X. said it will not allow the costumes inside because they may re-traumatize members of the LGBTQ+ community who lived through the horror of Dahmer.

"We understand there's a generation out there that did not live this situation, they may not understand the severity of how it affected the community," said Eric Hamilton, one of the bar managers at D.I.X Milwaukee. "We don't want to put patrons in the situation where they would have to see or relive something that they had to truly experience. That's not a costume. It's not a costume."

Dahmer killed 17 men and boys, most of them in Milwaukee. Authorities said he met many of his victims in gay bars.

"I wouldn't be surprised if someone does (wear the Dahmer costume) just on their own naivety, but our way of handling the situation is out of respect," Hamilton said. "We're not here to tell you what's appropriate or get authoritarian on you, but at the end of the day, we will politely ask you that you either remove part of your costume so it will not affect anyone, or politely tell you to go to another bar."

Online retailer eBay also prohibited selling Dahmer Halloween costumes, saying it violates its violence and criminal policy.

MAYFIELD, Ky. —

Kentucky towns devastated during a rare December tornado outbreak will take months or longer to rebuild. Recovering from the emotional trauma could take even longer.

Experts say it is important for tornado victims to be vulnerable and open to talking about the trauma they experienced.

"There's no rulebook of how to manage a natural disaster," said Tara Immele, a clinical social worker with Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services. "The first and foremost, you need a roof over your head and everyone acknowledges that. But the challenge is going back to address the emotional components there."

Immele said PTSD is common in people who experience a traumatizing natural disaster like a tornado.

"A lot of times it's a delayed response: a week, a month, six months later. You see a lot of folks enrolled in just basic counseling still addressing and responding to some of their negative experiences," she said. "Some people may withdrawal or act out, especially kiddos. But the thing is to make it a part of conversation, not force it but at the same time, don't make the tornado taboo."

The American Red Cross utilizes licensed therapists to meet survivors' emotional needs in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

A spokeswoman said the teams "identify individuals who need additional support, provide short-term disaster mental health interventions and refer individuals to local resources as necessary, in order to supplement local community resources and strengthen community resilience."

Tim Andreasen and his family are a handful of the tornado survivors in Mayfield who recognize they will need some kind of professional help to rebuild their minds and overcome the trauma of the storm.

"I'm taking it day by day right now. It's not fully hit me yet. It will hit me when I'm alone by myself," Andreasen said last week.

His 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter were both home when the tornado ripped their home apart.

"They keep hearing glass break every time they go to sleep," he said. "I keep telling him he needs to talk and get it out before it eats him up. I haven't even talked to nobody yet."

Beatboxing and raising awareness on suicide prevention — the two mixed together is what one Baltimore artist is about to debut at Carnegie Hall.

In open city spaces, Dominic Talifero, better known as Shodekeh, is in his element. At age 9, Shodekeh said he experienced different forms of abuse and turned to beatboxing to overcome suicidal thoughts and save himself.

"I had my first battle with ideation at around 9 years old," he said. "But unconsciously, I was looking for a way to creatively reclaim my body and reclaim my existence."

He is a survivor who says he's still learning. His debut piece, called Vodalities, draws inspiration from the environment. Starting with "breath art," he can imitate things you'd find in a forest, like wind, transitioning next into what's called vocal percussion and finally beatboxing -- a reflection of the environment using the acoustics inside a tunnel. He is creating a voice with a message.

"At the end of the day, I’m still the only one who can get out of my way. The people who have hurt me can't do that for me," he said.

Changing up the scenes, Shodekeh's talent goes to Carnegie Hall this winter. It's something he wants particularly black youth to hear.

"It's exciting and it's also equally terrifying," he said.

His beatboxing saved his life, and he is hoping to save more.

Watch the video above for the full story.

CARLISLE, Pa. — The old photos show young faces; all of them are Native American children. They are the children of Carlisle.

“They would cut their hair immediately,” said Susan Rose, a sociology professor and author of a book about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. “They weren't allowed to speak their own languages when they came here. They would take off their clothing and end up in military garb.”

Starting in 1879, over the course of four decades, nearly 8,000 Native American children ended up at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

It was the first off-reservation boarding school in the country and set the standard for hundreds of others that would follow.

Some of the students there were thousands of miles away from their homes.

“That's about as separated as you can be,” said Jim Gerencser, an archivist at nearby Dickinson College. “The purpose of the Carlisle Indian School was to turn Native American children and young adults into white, Victorian-era children of America.”

It was a philosophy pioneered by the school’s founder, former U.S. Army General Richard Henry Pratt. His image remains engraved on the site of the former school, which is now home to the U.S. Army Barracks in Carlisle. Back in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, though, the school was well-known.

“Carlisle is in the public eye because Pratt is operating his own kind of propaganda machine,” Gerencser said. “So, you see articles about Carlisle in the popular press all the time.”

Eight years ago, Gerencser and a team launched a massive undertaking: the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.

“The idea for the project was to digitize all of the known remaining records related to the Carlisle Indian School, and all the students who were sent there, and to make those documents easily discoverable and accessible online,” he said.

They found that the students came from more than 100 Native American tribes, from Florida to Alaska and nearly every state in between.

Some of the buildings of the former Carlisle Indian School now make up the U.S. Army barracks and are still in use today, like a gymnasium, which was built by the very Native American students who were forced to attend the school.

One of the school’s earliest students was Robbie Paul’s grandfather. He was 10 years old at the time.

“When he arrived at Carlisle, he had his Nez Perce name: Black Raven,” she said. “And while he was there, Pratt changed his name to Jesse Paul, and that's how we have the Paul family name.”

The experience for her grandfather and others wasn’t pleasant. Children were punished if they spoke their native language. Yet, Robbie Paul’s grandfather held on.

“Even though he's there eight years at Carlisle, where you're punished for speaking the language, somehow he hangs on to his language because he still speaks Nez Perce eight years later and comes back home to the reservation,” Paul said.

Not all the students came home. At least 235 children died at the Carlisle School.

“In some communities, those stories are really told, and in other communities, there's been a great silence,” said Susan Rose, co-author of Carlisle Indian Industrial School: Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations. “This isn't just Native American, American Indian history. It's part of our history.”

From the 1870s until the 1960s, there were more than 350 taxpayer-funded, and often times church-run, Native American boarding schools. The exact numbers of how many students attended those schools are hard to come by, but estimates range in the hundreds of thousands. Many experienced physical, sexual and emotional abuse, according to the National Native American Boarding School Coalition.

How many died within the entire Native American boarding school system across the country remains a big question. Now, there’s a formal effort to get to the bottom of it.

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose department oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is the first-ever Native American cabinet member.

Her grandfather also attended the Carlisle School and she recently ordered an investigation into the Native American boarding school system.

“It was a really complicated sort of philosophy and an experiment that now many would definitely consider as genocide,” Rose said.

The investigation’s goal is to get an accounting of what the children experienced, how many died at the schools and how many may still be buried in unmarked graves at the sites.

Recently, hundreds of unmarked graves of First Nations children were found at two schools in Canada, which had a similar boarding school system for Native children.

Just this month, the U.S. Army brought in a forensic team to disinter 10 Carlisle students buried in marked graves and returned them to their Native communities in Alaska and South Dakota. Those children had been previously buried in a cemetery elsewhere at the school, which was later moved to the current site in the 1920s.

“We looked at the cemetery and we looked at an area where the original cemetery was,” said Dr. Michael “Sonny” Trimble, an archaeologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers archaeologist. “Most of the original cemetery is beneath buildings now. You know, time has moved on. We found no signatures.”

Time hasn’t moved on for everyone, though. Robbie Paul thinks about her grandfather often and says trauma like that can be felt through the generations.

“This is truth-telling,” she said. “It is acknowledging the harm, transforming history, to begin repatriation, before we can start to reconcile and reconciliation.”

It’s a reconciliation that faces a long road ahead in the search for answers.