Citation

Reed AE, Rohrbeck CA, Wirtz PW, Marceron JE. Disaster Med. Public Health Prep. 2023; 17: e559.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Publisher Cambridge University Press)

DOI

10.1017/dmp.2023.214

PMID

38084598

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Individuals with physical disabilities experience distress when faced with the threat of human-made and natural disasters, yet little is known about how to reduce that distress. This study used Protection Motivation Theory to longitudinally test the relationships between psychological distress and disaster-related cognitive appraisals, including perceived threat, emergency preparedness self-efficacy, and response efficacy, in a sample of individuals with physical disabilities.

METHODS: A nationwide convenience sample of 106 adults completed 2 surveys approximately 5 years apart. Structural equation modeling was used to assess effects of perceived threat, self-efficacy, and response efficacy on psychological distress across the 2 waves.

RESULTS: Our results suggest that the associations of proximal perceived threat and self-efficacy with psychological distress remain stable across time, while the effect of response efficacy is variable and may be more context-specific. Importantly, individuals who reported an increase in self-efficacy over time also reported (on average) a decrease in psychological distress.

CONCLUSIONS: In addition to broadening our understanding of factors related to psychological distress, these results have potentially important intervention implications; for example, to the extent that self-efficacy is a malleable construct, one way of reducing disaster-related psychological distress may be to increase an individual's self-efficacy.

Language: en

Keywords

psychological distress; risk; disasters; self-efficacy; person with a disability