Another View: On Katrina's effect on mental health:

Editor’s Note: The Associated Press offers a look at editorials from all over the world and the United States.

A new study showing that up to 35,000 children— one-third of them across the Gulf Coast still displaced by Hurricane Katrina—are plagued by mental health, behavioral and school problems is not one of those documents that can be permitted to rest on some government shelf to collect dust.

This is something that requires immediate and ongoing attention.

The study, jointly conducted by the Columbia University National Center for Preparedness and the Children's Health Fund, also indicates that many of those children's parents are depressed, leaving them unable to help the children, according to Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the center and president of the health fund.

Redlener's concerns need to be shared by everyone. It's been 17 months since Katrina struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast, leveling much of the Gulf Coast and causing levee breaks in New Orleans that swamped the city and nearby St. Bernard Parish with murky and polluted water for weeks.

In addition to the physical devastation, Katrina brought out a smorgasbord of issues totally unrelated to weather and hurricane preparedness, although those are not to be summarily dismissed.

When children—the true innocents of the entire disaster—are victimized through no fault of their own, it is time to take notice. That notice needs to come by way of a combination of private sector initiatives, faith-based and civic relief, and government support.

The impact the hurricane had on the lives of the children is not something that is going to be washed away simply by time. It will take recognition and treatment.

—The Hattiesburg American, Harrisburg, Miss.