The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence.

Many people are exposed to loss or potentially traumatic events at some point in their lives, and yet they continue to have positive emotional experiences and show only minor and transient disruptions in their ability to function. Unfortunately, because much of psychology’s knowledge about how adults cope with loss or trauma has come from individuals who sought treatment or exhibited great distress, loss and trauma theorists have often viewed this type of resilience as either rare or pathological. The author challenges these assumptions by reviewing evidence that resilience represents a distinct trajectory from the process of recovery, that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma is more common than is often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience. M ost people are exposed to at least one violent or life-threatening situation during the course of their lives (Ozer, Best, Lipsey, & Weiss, 2003). As people progress through the life cycle, they are also increasingly confronted with the deaths of close friends and relatives. Not everyone copes with these potentially disturbing events in the same way. Some people experience acute distress from which they are unable to recover. Others suffer less intensely and for a much shorter period of time. Some people seem to recover quickly but then begin to experience unexpected health problems or difficulties concentrating or enjoying life the way they used to. However, large numbers of people manage to endure the temporary upheaval of loss or potentially traumatic events remarkably well, with no apparent disruption in their ability to function at work or in close relationships, and seem to move on to new challenges with apparent ease. This article is devoted to the latter group and to the question of resilience in the face of loss or potentially traumatic events. The importance of protective psychological factors in the prevention of illness is now well established (Taylor, Kemeny, Reed, Bower, & Gruenewald, 2000). Moreover, developmental psychologists have shown that resilience is common among children growing up in disadvantaged conditions (e.g., Masten, 2001). Unfortunately, because most of the psychological knowledge base regarding the ways adults cope with loss or potential trauma has been derived from individuals who have experienced significant psychological problems or sought treatment, theorists working in this area have often underestimated and misunderstood resilience, viewing it either as a pathological state or as something seen only in rare and exceptionally healthy individuals. In this article, I challenge this view by reviewing evidence that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma represents a distinct trajectory from that of recovery, that resilience is more common than often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience.

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Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience Have We Underestimated the Human Capacity to Thrive After Extremely Aversive Events?

Meta-analyses were conducted on 14 separate risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the moderating effects of various sample and study characteristics, including civilian/military status, were examined. Three categories of risk factor emerged: Factors such as gender, age at trauma, and race that predicted PTSD in some populations but not in others; factors such as education, previous trauma, and general childhood adversity that predicted PTSD more consistently but to a varying extent according to the populations studied and the methods used; and factors such as psychiatric history, reported childhood abuse, and family psychiatric history that had more uniform predictive effects. Individually, the effect size of all the risk factors was modest, but factors operating during or after the trauma, such as trauma severity, lack of social support, and additional life stress, had somewhat stronger effects than pretrauma factors.

Meta-analysis of risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder in trauma-exposed adults.

* Caring for children * The origins of attachment theory * Psychoanalysis as art and science * Psychoanalysis as a natural science * Violence in the family * On knowing what you are not supposed to know and feeling what you are not supposed to feel * The role of attachment in personality development * Attachment, communication, and the therapeutic process * Developmental psychiatry comes of age

A Secure Base. Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. New York (Basic Books) 1988.

From social integration to health: Durkheim in the new millennium.

There have been few studies of immediate reactions to earthquakes and devastating disasters in many parts of the world. Historically, Japan suffers earthquakes and these have had severe effects on communities, as in the earthquake of 1923 when at least 200,000 died. In this chapter, we will report preliminary findings on two separate earthquakes that occurred 10 years apart.

Earthquakes and Traumatic Stress

The burden of mental health problems is large and increasing. Eighteen per cent of people aged over 18 years in Australia report experiencing a mental health problem or disorder (anxiety, affective or substance use disorders) in the past 12 months. Prevalence is highest for young people aged 18 to 25 years (27 per cent). Despite this, only a small percentage of people with mental disorders actually seek help (38 per cent).

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Multicultural Family Help Kit.

Based on a literature review of the current research in prevention initiatives for child and adolescent mental health, it includes: initiatives aimed at the prevention of mental health problems, early intervention programs and services for young people with depression and related disorders, and first onset psychosis and suicide prevention.

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Prevention interventions for child and adolescent mental health: New South Wales resource document.

Ethical Issues in Disaster Psychiatry

Advances in neuroimaging permit in vivo investigation of the structural and functional neurobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Recent reviews of structural and functional neuroimaging in PTSD are discussed together with recent studies. The significance of the findings is limited by the disparate groupings of PTSD trauma exposures, making generalization difficult, and this, combined with the heterogeneity inherent in the existing diagnostic criteria, renders the often conflicting data confusing. There has been an emphasis on studies of cortical structures, without adequate consideration of neural circuit models implicating other brain structures. There has been a move towards investigating subsets of symptoms, such as hyperarousal and dissociation, particularly in functional imaging studies. Overall, neuroimaging research in PTSD faces challenges for the future. The key improvements lie in: the definition and classification of trauma exposures, as they are not all equivalent in nature or indeed comparable; the study of restricted phenotypic subsets of symptoms or endophenotypes, such as hyperarousal and dissociation which may have different neural substrates; adequate study designs for power and control of confounders; and more focused research based upon targeted investigation of neural networks putatively involved in the processing and re-experiencing of trauma. © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Beverley Raphael

Papers

Earthquakes and Traumatic Stress

Multicultural Family Help Kit.

Prevention interventions for child and adolescent mental health: New South Wales resource document.

Ethical Issues in Disaster Psychiatry

Structural and functional neuroimaging in PTSD: A neurobiological update