Citation

North CS, Pollio DE, Pollio EW. Behav. Sci. (Basel) 2022; 12(5): 152.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/bs12050152

PMID

35621449

Abstract

Disaster mental health is a consequential topic in today's world in which disasters are increasing in both numbers and magnitude and inflicting deep psychological wounds across wide populations. The succession of major disasters of many types in the last several decades has been followed by a rapid accumulation of disaster mental health literature examining post-disaster psychosocial outcomes. Ongoing research addressing evolving characteristics of disasters across the globe has exposed the limitations of traditional ways of conducting disaster research, necessitating development of innovative approaches for previously uncontemplated research challenges. Research has increasingly revealed that disasters lead to many different types of mental health sequelae including nonpathological distress as well as PTSD and other psychiatric disorders, all of which require different approaches directed by an accurate assessment of post-disaster difficulties. Continued new research responding to the evolving characteristics of disasters and their varied mental health sequelae is vital to helping guide the best mental health responses for the previously unimaginable circumstances presented by current and future disasters.

This Special Issue tackles these varied and evolving research challenges in a collection of articles addressing indispensable as well as underappreciated aspects of research on mental health effects of disaster and mass trauma in methodologically differing studies in adults and children, including the special case of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The studies in this collection cover events across the full disaster typology (natural disasters, technological accidents, and intentional human-caused incidents including terrorism). Some of these studies recruited directly exposed disaster trauma survivors, but others examined other disaster-affected populations. An array of research methods and designs found in these studies includes the use of different assessment tools (e.g., symptom self-report questionnaires vs. structured diagnostic interviews), quantitative and qualitative data approaches, epidemiologic/descriptive designs and intervention studies, and different times of assessment from early (from weeks to months) to longer-term (from years to decades) post-disaster periods and even pre-disaster time frames. The authors of the articles in this Special Issue bring a broad array of internationally recognized expertise in psychiatric nosology and research methodology arising from their extensive, longstanding, and pioneering disaster mental health research experience. In these articles, they have contributed extraordinary depth and rigor to unique angles of investigation from several perspectives, providing illumination of many critically important facets of this research.

Language: en