Natural hazards, trauma, and its amelioration: Lessons learned from India

Abstract

Foregrounding the devastating natural hazards of the 1999 supercyclone and 2004 tsunami in India, this narrative review critically examines survivors' trauma, its symptoms, risk factors, salient causes, resilience, and the amelioration of trauma. Documents were extracted from the Scopus and Google Scholar databases, further sourced from cross-referenced and recent publications, and were analyzed on the above facets of trauma. Findings suggest that trauma manifests through somatic and psychosocial symptoms. Individuals at risk of trauma are children, older people, females, widows, socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, displaced persons, and those with physical and intellectual disabilities, and non-adaptive personalities. However, coastal fishing communities and indigenous people are less prone to post-hazard trauma. The salient causes of trauma are the loss of life, loss of property, severity of exposure during the hazard, and inadequacy of and inequity in received social support post-hazard. Survivors’ intrapersonal resource possession and interpersonal resource gain post-hazard help nurturing resilience. In ameliorating trauma, pre-hazard evacuation of people and community preparedness can minimize the effects of exposure, loss of resources, and trauma. If such responses are inadequate, responsive search and rescue operations, subsequent psychological first aid and psychosocial support during natural hazards can decrease trauma. Trauma can be reduced post-hazard by facilitating an environment for garnering informational, emotional, and material support, building collective resilience, promoting cross-sector collaboration, preventing corruption and abuses, and executing micro-plans. These observations inform the details of interventions provided to the survivors after the natural hazard and their effectiveness, which may help developing strategies for the amelioration of trauma. The findings are discussed with implications, directions for research, and contributions to knowledge.