The psychosocial impacts of wildland fires on children, adolescents and family functioning: a scoping review

Abstract

Disasters have become increasingly common, calling for the need to more fully understand the impacts of such events. This article presents a scoping review of the psychosocial impacts of wildland fires on children, adolescents and family functioning. We identified 19 research articles and reviewed them according to the following characteristics: date and location of the fire, study time period, study design, instrument(s), sample and findings. The studies were primarily conducted within Australia, the US and Canada. The results identified factors that are linked to the impact of wildfires on children, adolescents and families. Age, gender, time, and proximity to the wildfire can impact both children and adolescents while behaviours of family members and home and property loss are important among families. Our understanding of the topic is limited because of the low number of studies, small sample sizes and inconsistent use of age groups and instruments. Future investigations would benefit by being placed within a disaster framework. Other recommendations include focusing specifically on family units, children and adolescents as the primary participants to generate more information about the aftermath of the fire event and conducting longitudinal studies with established scales to allow for comparisons.