Abstract
Disasters of any type are often associated with poor psychological health in community-residing adults who experience them. Social support is one factor that has been found to impact the outcome of psychological health in a positive way. In conducting a literature review of the effect of social support provided after a disaster on post-disaster psychological health of community-residing adults, varying types and sources of social support are seen as well as different statuses of disaster survivors. There are also differences in survivors’ attitudes and comfortableness in seeking and providing social support. Using data collected after the 2007 and 2014 northern San Diego County, California, wildfires, this chapter explores various types and sources of social support for a sample of 313 adults ranging in age from 18 to 94 years. Findings indicated that received social support differed among different disaster survivor groups with primary disaster survivors receiving more social support than other disaster survivor groups. Secondary disaster survivors were more comfortable seeking social support and received more social support than non-victims. Feeling comfortable providing social support was associated with providing social support. Implications of these findings for organizations developing programs to facilitate the recovery of disaster survivors are discussed.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank former students Edith Jimenez, Moe Perdomo, David Martinez, Sean Cuadra, Araceli Cruz, and Margaret Deitering for their help in the development of these studies, their help in entering and checking the data, and their help in the analyses of the data. I am also grateful to these students, Joe Phillips, and all the individuals who distributed the questionnaires. Two California State University San Marcos CHABSS Lecturer Professional Development Grants supported these research studies. This support is gratefully acknowledged.
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Phillips, J.R. (2021). The Impact of Social Support After a Disaster. In: Cherry, K.E., Gibson, A. (eds) The Intersection of Trauma and Disaster Behavioral Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51525-6_10
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