Overview
This chapter examines the various ways in which mental health professionals can assist in the psychological care and rehabilitation of disaster victims. This requires an understanding of the unpredictability and uncontrollability of disasters. It is important to realize that these are situations that require considerable adaptability by the professional, confront many of the usual clinical roles, and test the capacity for empathy. On occasions, dealing with traumatized populations challenges the normal professional impartiality and demands that the clinician take on the role of community activist. In the first instance, assessing the impact of disasters is a critical process because each type of event produces novel problems and an individual profile of trauma. It is useful to conceptualize the needs of a population in the different phases that are associated with disasters, as the range of professional responses required will vary significantly with the passage of time.
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McFarlane, A.C. (1995). Helping the Victims of Disasters. In: Freedy, J.R., Hobfoll, S.E. (eds) Traumatic Stress. Springer Series on Stress and Coping. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1076-9_12
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