Post-Disaster Psychological Resilience

Kangaroo Island, before the 2019-2020 bushfires, burned more than two-fifths of the island and killed two people.

Source: Courtesy of Ilan Kelman

We have all been through the terrible COVID-19 pandemic disaster. Many of us will have experienced numerous other disasters, whether at the personal level of a car crash or the nationwide level of a hurricane or a terrorist attack that leads a country to mourn. How do these experiences affect mental health and well-being alongside psychological resilience?

Australians Dealing With Disaster

A new paper in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry offers perspectives from Australia. Emily Macleod, at the Australian National University’s Centre for Mental Health Research in Canberra, led a team with 14 others from around the country. They surveyed 3,083 people living in Australia, asking about their bushfire and COVID-19 experiences, the distress they experienced, and the positives they could identify for dealing with the situations.

Distress covered symptoms of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and stress. Positive outcomes were about coping and well-being.

The results, as always, were mixed and offered pathways for action.

All participants identified significant distress, which is unsurprising within the context of COVID-19. Australia closed its borders for almost two years, permitting only a limited number of citizens and residents to enter the country. This measure permitted immense internal freedoms, which were difficult in many other countries, yet did not stop all COVID-19 outbreaks in Australia. Those patches were curtailed through swift and harsh lockdowns, taking their toll, even while helping others around Australia.

The distress recorded was worse for people who had experienced bushfires. The worse the fire experience, the worse the distress.

Among the people surveyed who had experienced bushfires, specific factors reduced distress and increased positive outcomes. These factors were being older, going through less financial stress, and having lower rates of previous mental health conditions. Less income loss and being male supported positive outcomes. More distress and more positive outcomes were seen with more severe bushfire exposure, a higher level of education, and more difficulties related to COVID-19. No patterns emerged for previous physical health conditions or previous experience with bushfires.

Wider Contexts of the Study

The authors quite rightly use their study’s results to call for supporting mental health and well-being. They focus on “vulnerable groups,” who they highlight as youth, people with mental health conditions already, and Indigenous peoples.

Expanding beyond their specifics, considering mental health and well-being should be for everyone. We all have vulnerabilities, so we are all part of one or more “vulnerable groups.” Everyone also has mechanisms for coping with vulnerabilities. We all need and deserve support for coping and thriving in our own ways.

Destigmatizing mental health and well-being conditions and openly talking about one’s mental health and well-being is part of the wider cultural shift being witnessed and could be further supported. This focus would highlight prevention to ensure that existing mental health and well-being conditions do not worsen while reducing the risk that others develop new mental health and well-being conditions.

Going beyond common tropes could help in the context of disasters. This paper repeats some of them, indicating the importance of working with people outside one’s core areas.

The first notion to reevaluate is the “disaster management cycle.” This idea is presented as a circle with connected parts, including risk mitigation or reduction, planning, and preparedness, and then a disaster followed by response, recovery, and reconstruction. Repeating this cycle might imply that disasters are inevitable. Conversely, the point of the paper and of acting before a disaster is to avoid disasters.

Rather than the “disaster management cycle,” it is the “disaster management rut” stuck on a pathway always aiming toward crisis. The aim should be to break this cycle and break out of this rut by avoiding disasters. An alternative model is a helix, ensuring that the cycle is never repeated.

Similarly, the paper’s statement that disasters are increasing in number and severity opposes stopping the cycle. Appropriate action reduces risk and stops disasters. This should be resilience: preventing disasters prevents adverse mental health and well-being outcomes.

Bushfires, new microbes, and many other environmental perils are inevitable. Sometimes, our actions worsen them, such as droughts triggered by overusing water and corrupt construction, turning a typical earthquake into infrastructure collapsing. Australia, in particular, needs to be wary of horrific heat and humidity, exacerbated by human-caused climate change, that is already pushing summers beyond human survivability outdoors.

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Disaster-related psychological resilience is not just about coping afterward. It is also about the fortitude to act on existing knowledge to stop disasters from happening. These actions would support everyone’s mental health and well-being.