These factors were being older, going through less financial stress, and having lower rates of previous mental health conditions. Distress covered symptoms of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and stress. By prioritizing people over cars, limiting demolitions, and fostering green spaces, Karachi’s eco-streets are revitalizing urban life, supporting local commerce, and mitigating climate risks. Brandon demonstrates how smart urban planning and resilient design can protect communities from future climate disasters. With support from the Vermont Downtown Action Team (V-DAT) and federal recovery funds, Brandon developed a community-driven revitalization plan that prioritized both economic recovery and flood mitigation. When disaster strikes, it tests the resilience and ingenuity of communities.
Institutional Review Board Statement
This general review aims to explore the impacts and contributions of social determinants to mental health and resiliency following both natural and man-made disasters. A significant amount of study has led to the recognition of a series of social, physical, and economic factors referred to as the potential causes of mental health issues after disaster. The growing recognition of mental health issues highlights the need to develop an understanding of what makes some people more vulnerable to be negatively impacted 2025 US Tornadoes and Severe Storms relief by disasters. In this general literature review, we will explore the impacts and contribution of social determinants to mental health and resiliency following both natural and man-made disasters. In this study we identified some of the barriers that need to be considered and solved in the early production of indicators of psychological resilience to disasters.
What is the unique psychological impact of different types of disasters?
- • All levels of government, communities, and the private sector have designed resilience strategies and operation plans based on this information.
- We know about the problems we face immediately after the disaster.
- We also discussed several other possible social determinants that were studied by some researches.
- Determinants of resilience include a host of biological, psychological, social and cultural factors that interact with one another to determine how one responds to stressful experiences.
In more recent reviews, cross-sectional or repeated cross-sectional was found to be the most commonly used design in disaster mental health studies, while a small portion of the studies used longitudinal design 34,100. In an early review of the methodological trends across 225 disaster mental health studies, Norris and Elrod reported that 72% of the samples were studied cross-sectionally, and the remaining ones were assessed two times . Later, in the 2000s, disaster mental health researchers became interested in the psychological consequences of those groups that were not directly exposed to the disaster but were impacted in some way, e.g., not living in the disaster region but hearing news about the disaster . In the following section, we describe the differing trends and prevalence of mental health problems after disasters in the context of different research methods. In those studies, various methods of research were used to evaluate both the short-term and long-term mental health consequences in disaster aftermath.
First, researchers agree that community adaptation cannot be identified in studies of individuals within only one population as the overall average at the level of the community hides the variability across community units (Norris et al., 2008). At the same time, there are still gaps in our understanding of resources that promote disaster resilience. Social capital and community efficacy were found to be related to posttraumatic stress (PTS) in the aftermath of an earthquake and a tsunami (Hikichi, Aida, Tsuboya, Kondo, & Kawachi, 2016), a hurricane (Ursano et al., 2014) and a flood (Wind & Komproe, 2012). Disaster researchers have recently begun to integrate the ecological framework in the study of resilience-promoting resources. A rich body of literature in community (for an overview see e.g. Harvey, 2007) and developmental psychology (for an overview see e.g. Masten & Narayan, 2012) highlights the importance of person-environment interactions in complex and changing social contexts that shape resilience.
Stress–reaction models focus on the distress-specific psychological outcomes of experiencing a disaster, particularly depression, anxiety, and PTSD 23,24,47,48. The search was conducted using natural disasters and mental-health-related terms to identify the relevant literature. Then, we consider the possible relationship between disaster transitional impact and mental health and discuss its implications.
Resilience is more than a buzzword—it is a principle that should be incorporated into how we build our homes, communities, natural systems, and public policies, not a mandate that we place on already burdened communities. But as we see more instances of repetitive loss, people find it harder to “bounce back” after losing everything, again and again. “Bouncing back” is often used as a shorthand to define resilience. Natural infrastructure—like wetlands, oyster reefs, floodplains, and forests—not only benefits birds and local habitats, it also provides critical, cost-effective protections against disaster impacts.