Florida

Hurricane Season and Anxiety: A Florida Guide

By Dr. Stacey Forbes, DNP, APRN, PMHNP-BC

Anxiety about hurricanes is not a distortion of reality. Florida gets hurricanes, and people who have watched a roof come off or a neighbourhood flood are responding to something that actually occurred. That makes storm anxiety a different clinical conversation from most anxiety — the goal is not to talk someone out of a belief that is accurate, but to work out whether their response is proportionate, contained, and leaving room for the rest of the year.

Where the line actually is

Preparation is not anxiety. Having a plan, supplies, and an evacuation route is what a reasonable Florida household does, and doing it calmly is a sign of health rather than illness. The line is crossed when the worry stops being seasonal and becomes continuous, when checking forecasts starts consuming hours, when sleep goes in June rather than in September, or when the anticipation itself begins to shape decisions that have nothing to do with storms.

• Checking forecasts or radar many times a day, out of season
• Sleep disruption that starts well before any named storm
• Avoiding travel, plans, or commitments across the whole season
• Physical symptoms — racing heart, stomach problems — on ordinary weather days
• Reassurance-seeking that provides relief for minutes and then resets

Storm trauma is not the same as storm anxiety

Someone who lived through a severe storm may have a trauma response rather than generalised anxiety: intrusive memories, a startle response to wind or rain, avoidance of reminders, or a sense of numbness that arrived after the event and did not lift. That is treated differently, and the distinction matters — anxiety treatment aimed at the wrong target tends to produce a partial response and a discouraged patient. It is worth saying explicitly at an evaluation if a specific storm is part of the history.

Keeping medication going through an evacuation

The practical failure mode is not dramatic: someone evacuates with three days of medication, is displaced for three weeks, and stops abruptly. For several psychiatric medications that is genuinely unpleasant and for some it is risky. This is solvable in advance, and June is the time to solve it rather than the week a storm is named.

• Keep a current written list of medications and doses in your go-bag
• Know your pharmacy chain’s policy on filling out of area
• Ask your prescriber before the season what to do if you are displaced
• Keep at least a few days of medication in the bag itself, not only in the cabinet

Care continues when you are displaced

One practical advantage of telehealth in a hurricane state is that it follows you. A video visit can happen from wherever you have evacuated to, provided you are still physically in Florida, which is when psychiatric care is most likely to be needed and least likely to be available locally. If an evacuation takes you out of state, that is worth raising in advance — licensure is tied to where the patient is at the time of the visit, not where the clinician sits.

After the storm

The weeks after a major storm are frequently harder than the storm itself: insurance, repairs, displacement, and a slow return to normal that takes far longer than anyone expects. Low mood and exhaustion in that period are an ordinary response to a genuinely difficult situation. They are still worth treating when they persist, and treating them does not require deciding whether the cause is external or internal — it is usually both.

Common Questions

Sources & Further Reading

• National Hurricane Center
• SAMHSA — Disaster Distress Helpline
• NIMH — Anxiety Disorders