Psychological Reactions after Disasters

Abstract

As the world’s population increases and resources are limited, societies become increasingly vulnerable to disasters. Regardless of the objective destructive effects, the psychosocial effects and consequences of natural disasters are quite clear in humans. Natural disasters exert different psychological effects on the exposed people, including but not limited to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and suicide. Yet, disasters can cause positive reactions. For example, through post-traumatic growth, one takes new meaning from his or her trauma and resumes living in a way completely different from their life prior to the trauma. Additionally, many people display remarkable resilience in the wake of the disasters they struggled with. Many factors such as disaster type, level of destruction, duration of disasters, timing (time of day, day of week, season) also individual indicators such as age, gender, marital status, education, pre-disaster mental health, social and economic status, and resilience are affecting the consequences of disasters. Given the many studies that focus on post-disaster psychological outcomes, in this chapter, we not only describe outcomes but also discuss psychosocial support in disasters.