What have we learned about the impact of disasters?

As a psychologist for more than 30 years, when a disaster impacts upon a community, across multiple communities, states or even the whole nation, I reflect on what we know, what I can do and how I am able to do it. We are motivated to assist as best we can, and I want to share with you the wisdom of some colleagues who have worked in this space with me over the years.

Since the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, we have become increasingly aware of so-called normal response trajectories, the value of human connection and the impact on people. The 2009 Black Saturday fires in particular gave us an opportunity to learn, and there are great evidence-based pieces of knowledge we need to have in our toolkit if we want to work in this space.

The information in this article is shared by my colleagues John Richardson from the Red Cross and Lisa Gibbs from the University of Melbourne who are both pioneers and keepers of our psychosocial learnings on this topic" - Michelle Roberts MAPS

Setting aside the partisan debate around the cause of the bushfires, the stories surrounding the current bushfire crisis fit a well-worn pattern. Much of the commentary frames a narrative outlining heroic near misses, tragic losses and stoic tales about ‘picking up and moving on’. We see this often in these circumstances, and it is an imagined rendering of what people think is happening. It is not too far removed from a disaster-movie storyline. However, what actually occurs on the ground, and what will happen into the future, will be far more complex and nuanced.

The narrative is just starting to shift toward what people will face in the coming weeks and months, and more long-term challenges after a year, five years and beyond. These are life-changing events, communities will no doubt be altered and the path to recovery will be bumpy.

We have to be thinking about these issues now so that people have a safety net as they navigate an array of life stressors, all at once, and over the next few years. We all face the death of loved ones, changing jobs, moving house, building and rebuilding, changing communities, and coping with illness over the course of our lives. And many of us will face some form of traumatic event. But people who have been through the fires will often experience all of these stressors simultaneously.

The current bushfires share some similar characteristics with the fires of Black Saturday; the media attention, the horror, the disbelief. While it is difficult to generalise, we have learned much from our research with the Beyond Bushfires team at the University of Melbourne on the impact of Black Saturday (beyondbushfires.org.au).

Impact on mental health

We know that three years after Black Saturday a quarter of people involved still experienced serious mental health challenges, but at the five-year mark, this proportion dropped to a fifth (Bryant et al., 2017a; Bryant et al., 2014). We all understand the debilitating nature of depression, anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Clinical service providers, particularly in the rural areas, need to be experienced in trauma and understand the disaster context.

Depression was more prevalent when people were connected to others with depression, or with people who had left the community, or had fewer social connections. PTSD was prevalent in people that had fewer social contacts who were not linked to each other, or were linked to people with high levels of property loss (Bryant et al., 2017).

Grief was also apparent (Harms et al., 2015). While the focus is often placed on those that lost loved ones, we know that it is far more complex than that. The loss of friends, community members, colleagues, pets, homes and the environment are all felt intensely by those affected by disaster. The good news is that prolonged grief in this context was rare.

Psychosocial effects

Violence against women and children will also occur in these contexts. We found that in areas that had a high impact, there were higher rates of violence against women, and that this contributed to poorer mental health outcomes (Molyneaux et al., 2020). This lines up with the stories captured by the Gender and Disaster Pod (genderanddisaster.com.au) in their research after Black Saturday. This issue needs to be discussed in any community education, capacity building for agencies, as well as having services available. It cannot be swept under the carpet.

We know that children’s educational outcomes are likely to be poorer, as we found that children in bushfire-affected schools were less likely to progress as expected from year three to year five in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) measures of reading and numeracy. Teachers need to be supported to help children reach their potential (Gibbs et al., 2019). Children may also benefit from learning about and contributing to bushfire education (Gibbs, Ireton, Block, & Taunt, 2018).

The recovery process has a significant impact on people’s health and wellbeing. This we know from the role of major life stressors post-disaster and their impact on people (Forbes et al., 2015). The stress of having to navigate a system that is often poorly targeted and/or coordinated is hard work.

We know that people’s decisions about whether to stay in their community or leave leads to different experiences but similar levels of wellbeing in the following years (Gibbs et al., 2016). People who fear for their lives during the bushfires or lose property are more likely to leave. The experience of the day remains with them, but they benefit from being removed from the ongoing disruptions and challenges in the bushfire-affected community.

Those that stay are more likely to experience depression if close friends and neighbours have moved away (Bryant, et al., 2017b). The ongoing community-wide recovery process is exhausting, but having a connection to the community helps, as does the shared processing of the trauma of the bushfires.

Research indicates that people who were separated from their loved ones and did not know if they were safe, suffered more distress and were at risk of poorer mental health outcomes (Richardson et al., 2016). This was particularly prevalent in people who were anxious about their relationships more broadly (Gallagher et al., 2016).

Recognition and positive growth

We know that being part of a group is really helpful for people and leads to lower levels of PTSD and depression. Social ties do matter (Gallagher et al., 2019). The challenge is not to become over-involved, and for the focus to be centred upon community-led recovery. The tendency in communities for a few people to do the heavy-lifting should be taken into consideration and monitored.

The regeneration of the natural environment also has a positive impact on people’s health and wellbeing (Block et al., 2019). A strong attachment to the environment led to reduced psychological distress, fewer symptoms of major depression and fire-related PTSD, and higher levels of resilience, posttraumatic growth and life satisfaction.

The phenomenon of posttraumatic growth is also prevalent, although this is associated with high levels of posttraumatic stress (Harms et al., 2018). This also needs to be recognised in community education. People need to know it is OK that they feel like they have grown as a result of the traumatic events they may have experienced, and not feel guilty about it.

Future directions

So much of what we have learned in this extraordinary research project, Beyond Bushfires, can now be used to help the communities in New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria begin to navigate their recovery process. They will not have to fumble around as much as we did in the aftermath of Black Saturday, the Alpine and Grampians fires. We have come a long way, but of course, there is still a long way to go.

The first author can be contacted at [email protected]