Psychology, Personal

A person confronted by an extraordinary event such as a disaster will receive perceptual stimuli from his or her social surroundings and environment. These will be decodified on the basis of models of reality gained from the person's previous experience and interpreted as the basis for decisions about future attitudes and actions. A healthy individual has a personality that is robust and flexible enough to give good support and maintain equilibrium under the stress. Such people are by far the majority of those affected by disasters, which do not cause large increases in mental illness, although they do result in considerable psychological harm and mental suffering.

The worst effects occur to people who suffer from psychological feedback mechanisms, of which there are two kinds. First, someone who suffers from negative feedback lacks control over his or her own personality. Psychological defense mechanisms such as negation, projection, and dissociation are employed. Second, and rather worse, an individual whose mental profile includes a strong element of positive feedback has a malleable personality structure with weak defense mechanisms and a tendency toward psychosis. Such a person may undergo psychological disintegration that causes loss of contact with reality. Hence, someone who is vulnerable to psychological problems has a personality that is too rigid or too flexible to adequately withstand the shock effect of disaster.

The main psychological effects of disaster upon individuals are related to depression, anxiety, and stress. Fortunately, the field of disaster psychology is well developed. Currently, teams of emergency personnel often include psychiatrists, whose tasks are divided into work with victims (people caught up involuntarily in the incident or disaster such as survivors, witnesses, and bystanders) and furnishing psychological aid to emergency responders.