Disaster Psychology Research Articles

Study on the context of school-based disaster management

In recent years, the incidence and impact of natural disasters have drastically increased. Schools are responsible for not only teaching disaster management knowledge but also serving as evacuation shelters. Occurrences of disasters are highly unpredictable. If a disaster happens during school hours, schools must consider the risks that students are exposed to and respond early to such an event. Moreover, if schools can implement an all-hazards management approach by comprehensively organising practical environmental preparedness, software plans, and disaster drills, then injuries, deaths, and property damages can be effectively reduced and school resilience to disasters can successfully enhanced. Therefore, this study established an assessment framework for school disaster management involving concepts such as scenario setting, emergency thinking, and disaster psychology. School disaster management plans and the integrity and validity of disaster drills were used as the basis of evaluation. According to the existent schools in Taiwan, this study proposed indicators for five major assessment dimensions, which were environmental context, school capability, school disaster management map, related resource importation, and teaching material development and implementation. Finally, 35 schools were evaluated to verify that the proposed school disaster management indicator system can effectively distinguish and reflect the disaster management condition of each type of school. Additionally, this system can facilitate schools to regularly inspect and verify various disaster management tasks, thereby enhancing their capability in responding to disasters.

일본의 재난관리체계 및 재난심리지원체계 고찰과 시사점

본 연구에서는 일본 재난관리 및 재난심리지원 체계를 살펴보고, 국내 재난심리지원체계의 구축 및 개선에 대한 시사점을 얻고자 한다. 이를 위해 일본과 한국의 재난심리지원 체계에 대한 국 내외 문헌을 중심으로 문헌연구가 이루어졌다. 일본에서는 대규모 재난 초동기에는 중앙에서 파견된 재난심리지원 인력인 재해파견정신의료팀(DPAT)에 의한 정신의료적 지원과 함께 적십자사에 의한 심리사회적 지원이 이루어지고, 재난 이후 중장기개입에 있어서는 마음케어센터에 의한 지원이 이루어지고 있다. 재난심리지원의 중앙 컨트롤타워 역할을 하는 재해시마음의정보지원센터는 재난정신건강정보지원시스템을 통해 전국적인 재난관련 데이터를 수집 분석 관리하여 전국적 수준에서 재난상황을 파악하고, 정보의 취합을 통해 중앙에서의 재난심리지원 활동을 관리한다. 일본 재난심리지원체계는 대규모 재난 시 마다 이를 계기로 하여 문제점들을 보완하고 수정하여 현재의 모습을 갖추어 왔다는 점에서 우리나라에 시사점을 준다. 연구결과에 기초하여 논의 및 시사점이 제시되었다. The purpose of this study is to contribute to developing psychological support system in disaster response of South Korea by examining that of Japan. Psychosocial support from the Red Cross with the psychiatric support by the DPAT from local government were achieved in the early stage of disaster psychology support system in Japan. In the long term intervention after disaster, psychiatric support from Kokoro-no care center has been established. In other words, not only traditional mental health approach but also disaster psychology support activities including psychosocial support are deployed. National Information Center of Disaster Mental Health, which is control tower of disaster psychology support, understand the disaster in the level of nationwide through collecting and analyzing the data related to disaster, and manage disaster psychological support activities. Disaster psychology support system in Japan modified problems immediately during large scale disaster that they are equipped with state of the current. Implications for disaster psychological support system and crisis counseling program in South Korea are discussed.

Spirituality in Resilience Processes in International Contexts: An Introduction

This special issue was prompted by several converging social and scholarly trends: a perceived rise in the frequency and severity of disasters, a call for more studies of the role of spirituality in disasters, a commitment to research on non-U.S. populations, and a recognition of the need for more sophisticated understandings of resilience processes. First, there has been a sharp increase of community-level disasters in the past decade with three of the most economically devastating natural disasters occurring in the past 8 years and approximately 5,000 terrorist attacks per year occurring over the past 10 years (Aten & Boan, 2016). The recent surge in refugee populations fleeing from war-inflicted disasters has garnered daily public attention on social media and traditional news sources. The overwhelming demands of these disasters necessitate multi-level theory and interventions to mitigate, manage, and recover from their complex effects. Second, research in the psychology of spirituality and religion has boomed in the last few decades; simultaneously, studies of spirituality and trauma are on the rise. However, scholarship on resilience during disasters within the psychology of spirituality and religion lags behind other fields of research. This seems like a misstep as coping during disaster has been viewed by many as intertwined with spirituality due to its inherent meaning-making nature (Orton & O'Grady, in press; Park, 2010). Four years ago, Walker and Aten (2012) co-edited a special issue in the Journal of Psychology & Theology on trauma and spirituality. In it, they called for future research addressing disasters and spirituality: Overall, we need more collaborative research, or researchers, that are capable of bringing together the best of disaster mental health and psychology of religion researchers if we are going to more fully capture the complexity of psychology of religion and disaster phenomena. (p. 351) The current special issue is an attempt to respond to the call for more sophisticated considerations of spirituality in resilience processes during disasters. Third, although the Journal of Psychology and Theology is a U.S.-based journal, the cosmologies of those with whom its readers work is increasingly more diverse. It is no longer uncommon for practitioners to work with first- and second-generation immigrants whose nations of origin differ dramatically from that of the practitioner. Consistent with this trend is the growing recognition of the untenable assumption that Western-based theory and research is universally applicable (Arnett, 2008; Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). Finally, the special issue explicitly refers to resilience in terms of processes rather than variance. Early research on resilience focused on resilience as a trait (i.e., hardiness) to be investigated as an outcome variable. In general, the field of psychology defaults to variance-based research; however, notable scholars have pointed out that variance-based studies are seldom replicable (Maxwell, Lau, & Howard, 2015) and often fail to capture the lived experience of participants and clients (Gergen, Josselson, & Freeman, 2015). Understanding and fostering multi-level resilience across complex contexts requires exploration of processes. In response to these four needs, the 2015 call for papers for a special issue on spirituality in resilience processes across international contexts was intended to attract cross-disciplinary and multi-level investigations of resilience processes during adverse life events, or cosmology episodes, across diverse contexts. Specifically, the call was for empirical or theoretical articles that addressed spirituality and religion in resilience processes at the individual, team, organizational, community, and/or national level with preference for manuscripts that focused on international populations. …

Problems and Solutions in US Refugee Resettlement Policy: An Interview with Liyam Eloul

Liyam Eloul is a trauma therapist specialized in the field of refugee mental health. She received her BA in Cultural Psychology from Queen’s University, Ontario, a graduate diploma in Psychosocial Interventions for Refugees and Forced Migrants at the American University in Cairo, and her MA in International Disaster Psychology from the University of Denver. Eloul has worked with resettled refugee populations in the United States and refugee populations in Egypt, Afghanistan, Syria, Oman, and Jordan. She received a Fulbright Award for cross-cultural trauma research in Oman, and has published on mental health and psychosocial programming in the United States, Oman, and Syria. Currently, Eloul is a Psychotherapist Trainer with the Center for Victims of Torture in Amman, Jordan.

The Potential of Agent Based Models for Testing City Evacuation Strategies Under a Flood Event

This paper explores the uses of Agent Based Models (ABM) and its potential to test large scale evacuation strategies in coastal cities under threat of an imminent flooding due to extreme hydro-meteorological events. The first part of the paper is an introduction to the field of complex adaptive systems (CAS) and the principles and uses of ABM in this field. It is also presented the benefits and limitations of such models. The second part of the paper focuses on the theory used to build the ABM. For this study, theories and frameworks of human behaviour and disaster psychology were used. To feed the ABM model qualitative and quantitative attributes or characteristics of human beings are abstracted from literature review, fieldwork and expert's knowledge. The third part of the paper shows the methodology used to build and implement the ABM model using Repast Symphony, a Java based modelling system. The results of the initial experiments implemented in a region of the city of Marbella, southern Spain, are presented and discussed. The preliminary results are promising to further enhance the development of the model and its implementation and testing at full city scale.

八本松トンネル火災事故に関する一考察

On March 17th, 2016 a fire accident happened at the Hachihon-matsu Tunnel in Hiroshima Prefecture. In this paper, the accident is described in detail as well as the facilities in the tunnel. In the latter half of the paper discussion leads to the safety standards for tunnel fires in Japan, which should be revised in the near future. Stress is put on the disaster psychology, which has to be taken into account in designing an escape scenario of the passengers in tunnel fires.

Fables of the Reconstruction: Human Emotion and Behavioral Heuristics in Environmental Economics

Environmental economics provides an especially rich source of insights into the impact of emotion, cognitive bias, and behavioral heuristics on risk assessment and management. In contrast with the ambivalent reception of behavioral psychology within mathematical finance, the impact of emotion and innate heuristics on environmental decision making has never been doubted. From the affect heuristic to the endowment effect and disaster psychology, environmental choices harbor the richest trove of economic departures from strict rationality.

Disasters, migrations, and the unintended consequences of urbanization: What’s the harm in getting out of harm’s way?

Under many circumstances, the global rural-to-urban migration trend may be increasingly adopted as a short-term coping strategy to shifting ecologies and natural disasters. While offering certain benefits from macro-level economic and public health perspectives, these migrations may also have unintended psychological consequences that are not easily understood through traditional disaster studies or cost–benefit analyses. If the goal of disaster and climate change research is to promote successful adaptation, then the long-term psychological well-being of people who have survived disaster and either adapted in situ or migrated into urban environments, is paramount. This article integrates research on disasters and climate change-induced migration with emerging perspectives from environmental psychology and the psychology of natural disasters to consider the potential costs of particular migration scenarios. We apply this analysis to the case of Shishmaref, Alaska, a rural Inupiat community on the northwest coast of Alaska facing habitual flooding disasters linked to climate change. Findings from Shishmaref illustrate the cultural vitality of subsistence landscapes and the potential health risks of compromised human–ecological relationships due to migration and/or displacement. Recommendations for policy makers and researchers are offered for promoting long-term well-being among affected individuals and communities.

Localization of post-disaster psychosocial care in China

Disaster is not independent of society and culture and always happens in specific cultural and social contexts. Cultural and social characteristics influence the responses of people affected by disaster, as well as the process of disaster relief.As one of the countries in the world that suffer most from natural disasters, various ethnic groups in China vary greatly in psychology and behavior characteristics after major disasters due to different geographical environments and economic and political conditions. To launch an effective post-disaster psychosocial care, 1) it is necessary to consider how to satisfy material, health, and other fundamental biological needs of affected people; 2) it is necessary to relieve disaster victims of their mental pain (spiritual in Chinese) and help them restore their psychological health; 3) it is necessary to revitalize the seriously unbalanced communities affected by disasters so that these communities would burst with vitality again. In addition, it is necessary to take specific ethnic and regional culture into account when helping people in these areas gradually achieve social adaptation and cultural identification. All these require us to intensify our efforts in the following four aspects: 1) to strengthen legislation and institutional construction in this field; 2) to help citizens master the most fundamental psychological principles and methods of coping with disasters to enable timely self-aid and mutual-aid; 3) to build a national database of the post-disaster psychosocial care teams; 4) to continue the research on disaster psychology, so as to provide a scientific basis as well as techniques and methods for implementing disaster relief efforts in a scientific way.

A Systems Approach to International Disaster Psychology

The burgeoning field of international disaster psychology has grown over the last 2 decades out of necessity and humanitarian concern, yet it lacks unity and perspective. This article describes the history of international disaster psychology and outlines the contemporary theories and approaches dominating the field, including the clinical, community mental health, and family models. It also sets out the domains of application, which involve people, disaster management processes, and core principles governing disaster management, itself. It goes on to highlight that these models of care and domains of application are presently incorporated in such a way that they often yield a variegated approach to international disaster psychology that too often leads to competition, redundancy, dependencies, and, moreover, lapses in care. In response to these limitations, the authors propose a systems approach to international disaster psychology that unifies both the existing theoretical foundations and the domains of application. Such an approach, it is argued, provides a more cohesive and integrative perspective and, furthermore, offers cultural latitude while simultaneously affirming basic psychological principles and practical issues around sustainability and ethical treatment in international disaster psychology.

News and Announcements

In this issue, we present varied news from Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, and the UK. Cyprus reports on the new National Awarding Committee for EuroPsy and changes in professional regulations. From the Czech Republic, we have reports on lectures by Comenius award winner Wilhelm Hofmann and the Prague Symposium on Crisis and Disaster Psychology. In Germany, the Communicator Award was awarded to Onur Güntürkün, and there are new developments in the field of legal psychology. The Slovenian Psychologists’ Association summarizes its annual conference and from the UK we have news on the new British Psychological Society president, as well as on the First World War Centenary Project, behavior change advice, and interviews with prominent psychologists.

Spiritually oriented disaster psychology.

According to Ronan and Johnston (2005) the number of people who will experience a disaster will double by 2050 from one billion people to two billion people. Since 1985 there has been an almost 400% increase in global natural disasters (Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, 2007). Researchers managing the global terrorism database report a similar increase in terrorist events over the last decade, with almost 5,000 events annually. Some of the worst disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, Haiti Earthquake, Japan Tsunami, and Philippines Typhoon occurred in the past decade alone. Disasters are becoming more complex, with primary disasters (e.g., earthquake) often triggering secondary disasters (e.g., nuclear meltdown). Research shows that disasters often leave a significant psychological and spiritual “footprint” on affected communities. Thus, the purpose of this article is to introduce readers to empirical research on the psychology of religion/ spirituality and disasters as well as to introduce a framework for spiritually oriented disaster psychology.

International disaster psychology ethics: A social justice model imbedded in a systems paradigm.

The ethical provision of psychological aid following international disasters is influenced by cultural factors and questions about how to effectively promote social justice. A need for holistic, sy...

The IASC Guidelines and the International Disaster Psychology Program at the University of Denver

There is a growing recognition of the signi¢cant psychological and psychosocial damage caused by natural and manmade disasters.This phenomenon has increased the demand for trained professionals with the necessary skills to address these problems, in diverse populations around the world. The Masters of Arts International Disaster Psychology (MAIPD) programme in the Graduate School of Professional Psychology was developed in order to help to meet this increased demand for professionals, required to work in the ¢eld of disaster psychology and emergency management within the United States, and around the world. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings (2007) are extensively utilised in this programme. The guidelines provide practical approaches for addressing psychosocial problems in (post)disaster settings, and provide a framework for developing plans and intervention strategies. This article examines the use of the IASCguidelines in an academic setting, and discusses a case example of how the IASC guidelines were utilised by MAIDP students working in Panama. This critical evaluation aims to provide practical information in order to assist faculty, students and practitioners preparing to work in (post)disaster settings.

(P1-98) Psychological Aspects of the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI)

The process of identification of disaster and mass casualties' victims (Disaster Victim Identification - DVI) impose requirements on the interdisciplinary cooperation of experts in many professions. When working with survivors and witnesses, it is necessary to maintain general ethical principles and follow the guidelines of optimal crisis communication with the affected people. The important thing is not to cause further secondary trauma. It is therefore necessary to understand the normal reactions of the human psyche in extreme stress and psychosocial needs of the people in stressful situations. Also members of DVI teams deserve adequate psychosocial support during and after the completion of difficult tasks. It is likely that these workers are psychologically resistant to extreme stress comparing to the general population but they are also increasingly exposed. To maintain work performance and life satisfaction is the possibility to use a specific psychological support very important. Keywords: acute stress reaction (ASR), DVI teams, disaster victim identification, crisis communication, survivors, crisis and disaster psychology, psychosocial crisis management, psychosocial care, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

EFPA and Work on Disaster, Crisis, and Trauma Psychology

In response to increasing concern about the effects of crises, disaster, trauma and, more recently, terrorism, EFPA established first a working party and then a Standing Committee to advise on the part psychology can play in preparing for emergencies and responding to them. The Committee has drawn together evidence and views from across Europe and the wider international scene. It has worked closely with the European Commission and has embarked on further training for members from recently acceded countries. It has recommended better ways of liaising across countries so that in the event of cross-border incidents, more efficient and effective responses can be assured. In turn this has implications for the training of psychologists and other professionals involved in emergency planning and response. Currently, there is a move to develop quality standards for such training.

Evacuation models and disaster psychology

In evacuation models of buildings, neighborhoods, areas, cities and countries important psychological parameters are not frequently used. In this paper the relevance of some important variables from disaster psychology will be discussed. Modeling psychological variables will enhance prediction of human behavior during evacuations.John Leach’s Dynamic Disaster Model describes three phases and five stages: A Pre-impact phase (Threat Stage and Warning Stage), an Impact phase, and a Post-impact phase (Recoil Stage, Rescue Stage and Post-traumatic Stage). In each phase and stage specific human behavior has been supposed to be a psychological response to a disaster. These responses are remarkably consistent and transferable across kinds of disasters.Evacuation happens during Pre-impact phase, Impact phase and Post-impact phase (Recoil Stage and, or Rescue Stage). People’s cognitive and emotional states and overt behavior will be very different across the phases. During the Pre-impact phase risk estimation is very low, so evacuation is not seen as an inevitable action. Heavy stress and denial of life-threatening events during the Impact phase will hinder effective evacuation. Inactivity, apathy and childlike dependency on other people during the Recoil Stage will restrain survivors from active evacuation.Evacuation models will be more effective if phases and accompanying human behavior are taken into account.

A Review of “The elements of disaster psychology: Managing psychosocial trauma, an integrated approach to force protection and acute care”

A Review of “The elements of disaster psychology: Managing psychosocial trauma, an integrated approach to force protection and acute care”

Effectively planning for and managing major disasters.

The impact of recent major disasters has driven home the need for psychologist managers to incorporate disaster planning and planning for continuity of operations into their organizations' strategic planning. As a result, the Society of Psychologists in Management (SPIM) has included key sessions on this topic on the agendas of their annual conferences. This article summarizes a session from the 2007 conference that included a keynote talk by John Cavanaugh, PhD, based on an article previously published in this journal (Cavanaugh, 2006) and his subsequent additional disaster preparation and response experience. The session also included a panel discussion that explored applying and adapting lessons learned from hurricane disasters to other types of disaster situations. Gilbert Reyes, PhD, was invited to participate on this panel because of his renowned expertise in international disaster planning and response. His four volume book on international disaster psychology (Reyes & Jacobs, 2005) provides a thor...

Sameness and Diversity in Families Across Five Continents

ABSTRACT The tumultuousness throughout the world, both in terms of people-precipitated and naturally caused crises and disasters, seems to have escalated in the last 30 years. Few areas of the globe have been left untouched. This article addresses some of the major forces and trends that have erupted, occurred, or accelerated during this time frame, with some allusions to their historical roots, particularly considering their impact on families in many regions of the world, the upheavals, dislocations and relocations, multiple separations and deaths, unfathomable losses and changes in family structures and sometimes belief systems. It also addresses the urgency of having mental health professionals trained in multicultural trauma and disaster psychology and knowing how to help survivors recognize and claim their courage, strengths, and resiliency so that after they mourn the tragedies they have experienced, they can move into the present and build a better future.