This weekend of spoke with one of
my colleagues that is currently in New Jersey. The call came out of the blue,
so I asked, ”how is it going”, after a long pause he shared his feelings for a
while. I asked what were the three basic problems disaster affected people were
facing: (1) lack of appropriate housing, (2) upper respiratory injections due
to the mold, and (3) mental health issues to deal with secondary stressors. “It
is so bad that whole families are impacted now and will be impacted for life”. “The
sad part is that we don’t have protocols in place to deal with all the small
issues that are turning into insurmountable mountains for these people”
Recovery must consider the psychosocial
context and well being of the affected families. Such is the case with
displaced people not recognized by FEMA such “as non resident aliens”.
Relocation is an acute and short-term life events; except for those without
government assistance it becomes a long-term life event. It imposes a
considerable amount of stress because when the disaster affected people are
forced to move because of an impending catastrophe, they know they will loose everything
they had. This perspective minimizes the dynamic quality of mobility and
ignores the longer term health and behavioral health consequences of the
relocation that unfold gradually as the disaster affected families moved from
the shelters to temporary housing, to living with relatives and hopefully back
in their place.
Based on our experience and the
existing research we propose that there are deleterious health and mental
health effects caused by disaster related relocation, not only the immediate circumstances
surrounding a move, but also the broader context of the individual’s
residential history, the perception of well being in place, the current
situation, and the aspiration for the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment