Faced with oil spill, Gulf residents fight mental pain

BURAS, Louisiana — With the Gulf oil spill destroying livelihoods across southern Louisiana, anxiety over an uncertain future is prompting a desperate rise in depression, health officials and residents warn."This whole area is gonna die," cried fifth-generation fisherwoman Darla Brooks in an interview Wednesday with AFP, in the small fishing-based town of Buras."Down here, we have oil and we have fishing. We are water people. Everything we do involves the sea, and the spill has taken it all away from us," she said.Brooks, 37, who grew up on the Gulf of Mexico being taught how to fish and shrimp by her father, lamented the loss of a way of life -- and being deprived of teaching a five-year-old grandson how to be fish boat captain just like her."I'm angry, I'm frustrated. I've been contemplating suicide to the point of making myself a hangman's noose; honest to God. Then I decided that's not going to do anything, apart from shut me up," she said, promising not to cry anymore.Stories of such desperate, personal losses are so familiar in this area, since the catastrophic oil spill began three months ago, that Mike Brewer -- project manager at a nearby BP decontamination site for cleanup workers -- says he receives calls "everyday about people who want to commit suicide."The rising stress and depression levels are not limited to the job site, however, or to out-of-work fishermen themselves, Brewer told AFP."It's just people in general. The outside world forgets; this thing doesn't just affect fishermen, its their families. It's everybody who is being hit."Counselors are needed at his own cleanup zone "every day," he said, adding that it was the same in coastal regions across the Gulf.Brewer, a candidate in upcoming local elections, is organizing a "fun day" in the near future for families in the Buras area, in a bid to get people to stop thinking about the spill -- the worst in US history -- for just one day."Financial stress is killer number one," he said, lamenting how energy giant BP -- tasked by the US fed

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