Three Takeaways from the Video
Disaster mental health seeks to help people go through the crisis successfully. It involves early interventions that facilitate collaboration and consultation among team members. These actions enhance a sense of security for the survivors. The hierarchy of needs for the victims includes survival, safety and security, and health and wellbeing. Health and wellbeing focus on returning the victims to the pre-disaster mental health state. This involves talking with people, conducting a brief assessment and follow-up, and offering them resources to get over the problem.
Determining whether a disaster was natural or manmade is an essential factor that impacts the pathologies that victims develop after a disaster. It is also necessary to decide whether the disaster could have been predicted or planned or incidental or intentional. These factors play an imperative role in shaping people's reactions and their pathologies after the disaster, such as mood, substance abuse, or personality disorders.
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After a disaster, victims develop behavioral and psychological mechanisms to cope. In problem-focused coping mechanisms, individuals use actions to reduce the stressful circumstances, while emotion-focused coping involves regulating the emotional consequences of the stressful events. Besides, people develop active and passive coping strategies. In active coping, people use behavioral and psychological responses to deal with the event, while passively, individuals engage in activities that do not directly address the stressful event. Active and problem-focused coping strategies enable victims to develop better emotional adjustment to the disaster.
Summary
The author seeks to highlight the mental health issues that individuals experience after a disaster strikes. She stated that after a disaster, victims go through a series of bodily and psychological reactions before developing pathology. Individual’s ability to successfully cope with these negative reactions determines the kind of pathologies they will develop. After a disaster, victims develop a range of pathological disorders such as anxiety, stress, PTSD, memory loss, and sleep disturbance. The treatment interventions instigated include psychosocial approaches and medications. Psychosocial interventions include relaxation training, education, and cognitive behavioral therapy, while the medications used include antidepressants, atypical antipsychotics, beta-blockers, and benzodiazepines.
