Communities have the potential to function effectively and adapt successfully in the aftermath of disasters. Drawing upon literatures in several disciplines, we present a theory of resilience that encompasses contemporary understandings of stress, adaptation, wellness, and resource dynamics. Community resilience is a process linking a network of adaptive capacities (resources with dynamic attributes) to adaptation after a disturbance or adversity. Community adaptation is manifest in population wellness, defined as high and non-disparate levels of mental and behavioral health, functioning, and quality of life. Community resilience emerges from four primary sets of adaptive capacities—Economic Development, Social Capital, Information and Communication, and Community Competence—that together provide a strategy for disaster readiness. To build collective resilience, communities must reduce risk and resource inequities, engage local people in mitigation, create organizational linkages, boost and protect social supports, and plan for not having a plan, which requires flexibility, decision-making skills, and trusted sources of information that function in the face of unknowns.

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Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness

Disasters typically strike quickly and cause great harm. Unfortunately, because of the spontaneous and chaotic nature of disasters, the psychological consequences have proved exceedingly difficult to assess. Published reports have often overestimated a disaster's psychological cost to survivors, suggesting, for example, that many if not most survivors will develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); at the same time, these reports have underestimated the scope of the disaster's broader impact in other domains. We argue that such ambiguities can be attributed to methodological limitations. When we focus on only the most scientifically sound research--studies that use prospective designs or include multivariate analyses of predictor and outcome measures--relatively clear conclusions about the psychological parameters of disasters emerge. We summarize the major aspects of these conclusions in five key points and close with a brief review of possible implications these points suggest for disaster intervention. 1. Disasters cause serious psychological harm in a minority of exposed individuals. People exposed to disaster show myriad psychological problems, including PTSD, grief, depression, anxiety, stress-related health costs, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation. However, severe levels of these problems are typically observed only in a relatively small minority of exposed individuals. In adults, the proportion rarely exceeds 30% of most samples, and in the vast majority of methodologically sound studies, the level is usually considerably lower. Among youth, elevated symptoms are common in the first few months following a high-impact disaster, but again, chronic symptom elevations rarely exceed 30% of the youth sampled. 2. Disasters produce multiple patterns of outcome, including psychological resilience. In addition to chronic dysfunction, other patterns of disaster outcome are typically observed. Some survivors recover their psychological equilibrium within a period ranging from several months to 1 or 2 years. A sizeable proportion, often more than half of those exposed, experience only transient distress and maintain a stable trajectory of healthy functioning or resilience. Resilient outcomes have been evidenced across different methodologies, including recent studies that identified patterns of outcome using relatively sophisticated data analytic approaches, such as latent growth mixture modeling. 3. Disaster outcome depends on a combination of risk and resilience factors. As is true for most highly aversive events, individual differences in disaster outcomes are informed by a number of unique risk and resilience factors, including variables related to the context in which the disaster occurs, variables related to proximal exposure during the disaster, and variables related to distal exposure in the disaster's aftermath. Multivariate studies indicate that there is no one single dominant predictor of disaster outcomes. Rather, as with traumatic life events more generally, most predictor variables exert small to moderate effects, and it is the combination or additive total of risk and resilience factors that informs disaster outcomes. 4. Disasters put families, neighborhoods, and communities at risk. Although methodologically complex research on this facet of disasters' impact is limited, the available literature suggests that disasters meaningfully influence relationships within and across broad social units. Survivors often receive immediate support from their families, relatives, and friends, and for this reason many survivors subsequently claim that the experience brought them closer together. On the whole, however, the empirical evidence suggests a mixed pattern of findings. There is evidence that social relationships can improve after disasters, especially within the immediate family. However, the bulk of evidence indicates that the stress of disasters can erode both interpersonal relationships and sense of community. Regardless of how they are affected, postdisaster social relations are important predictors of coping success and resilience. 5. The remote effects of a disaster in unexposed populations are generally limited and transient. Increased incidence of extreme distress and pathology are often reported in remote regions hundreds if not thousands of miles from a disaster's geographic locale. Careful review of these studies indicates, however, that people in regions remote to a disaster may experience transient distress, but increased incidence of psychopathology is likely only among populations with preexisting vulnerabilities (e.g., prior trauma or psychiatric illness) or actual remote exposure (e.g., loss of a loved one in the disaster). Finally, we review the implications for intervention. There is considerable interest in prophylactic psychological interventions, such as critical incident stress debriefing (CISD), that can be applied globally to all exposed survivors in the immediate aftermath of disaster. Multiple studies have shown, however, that CISD is not only ineffective but in some cases can actually be psychologically harmful. Other less invasive and more practical forms of immediate intervention have been developed for use with both children and adults. Although promising, controlled evaluations of these less invasive interventions are not yet available. The available research suggests that psychological interventions are more likely to be effective during the short- and long-term recovery periods (1 month to several years postdisaster), especially when used in combination with some form of screening for at-risk individuals. Such interventions should also target the maintenance and enhancement of tangible, informational, and social-emotional support resources throughout the affected community. Language: en

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1529100610387086

Weighing the Costs of Disaster: Consequences, Risks, and Resilience in Individuals, Families, and Communities

The phrase primum non nocere (''first, do no harm'') is a well-accepted credo of the medical and mental health professions. Although emerging data indicate that several psychological treatments may produce harm in significant numbers of individuals, psychologists have until recently paid little attention to the problem of haz- ardous treatments. I critically evaluate and update earlier conclusions regarding deterioration effects in psycho- therapy, outline methodological obstacles standing in the way of identifying potentially harmful therapies (PHTs), provide a provisional list of PHTs, discuss the implications of PHTs for clinical science and practice, and delineate fruitful areas for further research on PHTs. A heightened emphasis on PHTs should narrow the scientist-practi- tioner gap and safeguard mental health consumers against harm. Moreover, the literature on PHTs may provide in- sight into underlying mechanisms of change that cut across many domains of psychotherapy. The field of psychology should prioritize its efforts toward identifying PHTs and place greater emphasis on potentially dangerous than on empirically supported therapies.

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Psychological Treatments That Cause Harm

In the wake of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, more than 9,000 counselors went to New York City to offer aid to rescue workers, families, and direct victims of the violence of September 11, 2001. These mental health professionals assumed that many New Yorkers were at high risk for developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and they hoped that their interventions would mitigate psychological distress and prevent the emergence of this syndrome. Typically developing in response to horrific, life-threatening events, such as combat, rape, and earthquakes, PTSD is characterized by reexperiencing symptoms (e.g., intrusive recollections of the trauma, nightmares), emotional numbing and avoidance of reminders of the trauma, and hyperarousal (e.g., exaggerated startle, difficulty sleeping). People vary widely in their vulnerability for developing PTSD in the wake of trauma. For example, higher cognitive ability and strong social support buffer people against PTSD, whereas a family or personal...

/pdf/does-early-psychological-intervention-promote-recovery-from-2a17vdwal3.pdf

Does Early Psychological Intervention Promote Recovery From Posttraumatic Stress

Disaster preparedness and perception of flood risk : A study in an alpine valley in Italy

Psychological debriefing (PD) is a brief, short-term intervention aimed at mitigating long-term distress and preventing the emergence of posttraumatic stress. In recent years, it has become a ubiqu...

http://devilly.org/Publications/GPR_-_Debriefing_-_Published.pdf

Ready! Fire! Aim! The status of psychological debriefing and therapeutic interventions : in the work place and after disasters

Part 1 Foundations for the study of community disaster: the social and community contexts of disaster a classification scheme for disasters. Part 2 Types of disaster: natural disasters human responses and treatment needs in airline disasters the nature and effects of technological failures crime, violence, and terrorism. Part 3 Approaches to intervention: factors influencing help-seeking for mental health problems after disasters mental health and disaster: preventative approaches to intervention clinical responses to disaster: assessment, management and treatment planning and integrating disaster response. Part 4 Other issues: legal issues and public policy in the psychology of disasters evaluation and research issues in assessing disaster's effects. Epilogue: rebuilding and strengthening communities.

Psychosocial aspects of disaster

Feel lonely? What about reading books? Book is one of the greatest friends to accompany while in your lonely time. When you have no friends and activities somewhere and sometimes, reading book can be a great choice. This is not only for spending the time, it will increase the knowledge. Of course the b=benefits to take will relate to what kind of book that you are reading. And now, we will concern you to try reading response to disaster psychosocial community and ecological approaches as one of the reading material to finish quickly.

Richard Gist

Papers

Ready! Fire! Aim! The status of psychological debriefing and therapeutic interventions : in the work place and after disasters

Psychosocial aspects of disaster

Response to Disaster: Psychosocial, Community, and Ecological Approaches

Post-trauma debriefing: the road too frequently travelled.

Mental health promotion and the media. Community response to the Kansas City hotel disaster.