User:Narehsahakian/sandbox

=9. Mental Health Effects=

9.1 Negative Mental Health Impacts of Earthquakes
The Christchurch earthquake of 2011 had widespread mental health effects on the population. Research following the Christchurch earthquakes has shown that increasing exposure to the damage and trauma of a natural disaster is correlated with an increase in depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Those with the most exposure suffer the most from mental health deficits, compared with those that are relatively unaffected. Increases in trauma exposure are related to increased dependence on alcohol and nicotine, as well as prescribed psychiatric medication. This information is important to consider when reacting to future earthquakes and other natural disasters. There is evidence that suggests that the mental health effects of natural disasters can be debilitating and detrimental to the community affected.

9.2 Positive Mental Health Impacts of Earthquakes
Evidence from research on the Christchurch earthquakes reveals that increased trauma exposure is not exclusively correlated with negative outcomes. Those with relatively high exposure to earthquake damage show an increase in positive effects, including an increase in personal strength, growth in social relationships, the bringing of families closer, and realizing what's important in life. It's thought that natural disasters, such as earthquakes, are able to induce these positive effects because they affect an entire community, in comparison to an event that targets only an individual. The damage on a community can lead members to engage in pro-social behaviors which are driven by empathy and desire to support others who have endured a similar traumatizing experience. Positive effects, such as a greater sense of community connection, can aide in helping the community heal as a whole. Implemented programs can use this knowledge to help survivors focus on the positive effects, possibly working with families to help them get through the disaster with the people they feel closest with.

9.3 Predictors of Mental Health Deficits Following Trauma
Predictors of poor mental health after a trauma, such as mental health status prior to a trauma and individual characteristics, can help determine those who will be more vulnerable to developing mental health problems. Those that exhibit lower mental health prior to an earthquake will be more likely to experience negative life changes than positive life changes with regard to personal strength. Depressive symptoms before a disaster can predict higher chances of developing PTSD following a trauma. People who exhibit lower mental health prior to the trauma don't adapt as well following trauma, and show higher levels of PTSD. Personality traits, such as neuroticism and low self-control are associated with a lower sense of normalcy following an earthquake, however optimism is predictive of lower and less severe PTSD symptoms.

9.4 Limitations of Studying Earthquakes and Mental Health Effects
Studying earthquakes has shown to be a difficult task when considering all the limitations created by natural disasters. Clinical interviews are difficult because of the widespread damage to infrastructure and roads, which leads to reliance on self-report. Self-report can introduce bias to results, leading to skewed data. Researchers are unable to reliably compare an individual's mental health status to their health status previous to the trauma because they must rely on retrospective self-report. Retrospective self report is affected greatly by the individual's current state of distress. The displacement of large numbers of citizens following a trauma poses as a problem for researchers of natural disasters. It is predicted that the people who are displaced experience the worst of the damage, and therefore the reported levels of PTSD and depression are often lower than they would have been had the displaced citizens been available to collect data from. Because large number of citizens are being displaced, it is difficult to find a representative sample population. For example, after the Christchurch earthquakes, studies reported that older educated females of European New Zealand descent were over represented in their sample population, which isn't accurate of the Christchurch population as a whole.

9.5 Importance
Researching the mental health effects of earthquakes and other disasters is important so communities can heal properly after experiencing a traumatic event. This is a difficult topic to research because fixing the physical damage from a disaster is usually the first step a city takes towards recovery. Each individual can react differently to traumatic events, and more research needs to be done to learn how to predict vulnerability and access the effects to find solutions that work best. Because it's been found that different demographics are affected differently, this also needs to be taken into account when finding solutions to aid recovery. Different demographics may benefit from different types of mental counseling to help them recover from trauma. It's important to have information on a wide variety of demographic groups because the same mental health treatment will not help all of those affected by a trauma.

=Context Memo=

After doing some research, I was unable to find Wikipedia pages on natural disasters similar to the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake page that included sections about the mental health effects of the trauma caused by natural disasters. I thought this was an important factor to consider because almost all of the natural disaster pages included sections that discussed damage to the city, infrastructure, population loss and international aide. However all of them failed to mention the health of the people effected. I think this section would make more sense in the Wikipedia community as a whole if more natural disaster pages had similar sections. Of course, maybe the mental health effects are not studied after every disaster, however regarding the ones that have this data, I think it would be important for that information to be easily accessible via Wikipedia. If other natural disaster pages had similar sections, I think the section that I added to the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake page would hold more merit. My addition to the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake page does not require in depth knowledge about mental health or trauma. The information is relatively straightforward, and links are included for words or concepts that might cause confusion. One assumption (however it is explained in the post) is that the reader knows that self-report in psychological studies introduces bias because participants will often not be completely honest.