This book integrates Western mental health approaches and international models of psychosocial capacity building within a social ecology framework, providing practitioners and volunteers with a blueprint for individual, family, group, and community interventions. Joshua L. Miller focuses on a range of disasters at local, regional, national, and international levels. Global case studies explore the social, psychological, economic, political, and cultural issues affecting various reactions to disaster and illustrate the importance of drawing on local cultural practices to promote empowerment and resiliency. Miller encourages developing people's capacity to direct their own recovery, using a social ecology framework to conceptualize disasters and their consequences. He also considers sources of vulnerability and how to support individual, family, and community resiliency; adapt and implement traditional disaster mental health interventions in different contexts; use groups and activities to facilitate recovery as part of a larger strategy of psychosocial capacity building; and foster collective grieving and memorializing. Miller's text examines the unique dynamics of intergroup conflict and the relationship between psychosocial healing, social justice, and peace and reconciliation.

Disaster responders treat more than just the immediate emotional and psychological trauma of victims: they empower individuals and families to heal themselves long into a disaster's aftermath. This requires helping survivors to rebuild their ability to meet their emotional and psychological needs, not only for themselves but also for others, which necessitates a careful consideration of survivors' social, economic, and political realities as their communities heal and recover. This comprehensive book integrates Western mental health approaches and international models of psychosocial capacity building within a social ecology framework, providing practitioners and volunteers with a blueprint for individual, family, group, and community interventions. Joshua L. Miller focuses on a range of disasters at local, regional, national, and international levels. Global case studies explore the social, psychological, economic, political, and cultural issues affecting various reactions to disaster and illustrate the importance of drawing on local cultural practices to promote empowerment and resiliency. Miller encourages developing people's capacity to direct their own recovery, using a social ecology framework to conceptualize disasters and their consequences. He also considers sources of vulnerability and how to support individual, family, and community resiliency; adapt and implement traditional disaster mental health interventions in different contexts; use groups and activities to facilitate recovery as part of a larger strategy of psychosocial capacity building; and foster collective grieving and memorializing. Miller's text examines the unique dynamics of intergroup conflict and the relationship between psychosocial healing, social justice, and peace and reconciliation. Each chapter ends with a mindfulness exercise, and a section reviews practitioner self-care.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This new volume, Disaster Recovery: Community-Based Psychosocial Support in the ​Aftermath, provides a wealth of realistic and applicable information for addressing mental health related issues resulting from disasters. It will provide readers with both a theoretical and practical look at community-based psychosocial support and community consultation from an interdisciplinary perspective. The last thirty years have brought to the fore the importance of psychosocial support as an integrator and cross-cutting theme in disaster response. The need for a timely volume on this topic at this time is based on recent world efforts to include the topic within the disaster risk reduction framework. In this volume, the authors share their practical knowledge about development of community-based psychosocial support based on the hundred of thousands of people in fourteen countries and three continents who provided an immense amount of knowledge about psychosocial support through their participation in programs. These programs helped to lead the way in sharing the strategies and tools presented in here. This book uses case study methodology and practical examples to share how communities can come together, care for themselves, and use their social capital and problem-solving skills to survive and thrive. The information in the book will aid in the development of program offerings for mental health and psychosocial support in disasters and humanitarian emergencies. The final section will provide the components of a proposal for external work and a chapter on monitoring and evaluation. The book will include case studies to help illustrate the content. Edited by Dr. Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz, a 2008 recipient of the American Psychological Association’s International Humanitarian Award, the book is based on his extensive experience and existing research in the field. The information provided here will be helpful to those working in or teaching on disaster management and support, including professors and instructors, students in social work and psychology, government and non-government agencies personnel in the field in places where emerging conflicts are occurring, and many others.

Psychological service in the wake of cataclysmic life events has emerged as a prominent and visible component of social response. This has generated a bandwagon of potential service providers, service approaches, and service venues. Where once help was scarce, it has become plentiful enough to engender its own set of conflicts and contradictions along with its intended solace and aid. Response to Disaster reconciles the technical, theoretical, and applied interests represented in these various populations and provides a contemporary treatment that can help define the directions of their increasing interaction.

In the devastation that follows a major disaster, there is a need for multiple sectors to unite and devote new resources to support the rebuilding of infrastructure, the provision of health and social services, the restoration of care delivery systems, and other critical recovery needs. In some cases, billions of dollars from public, private and charitable sources are invested to help communities recover. National rhetoric often characterizes these efforts as a "return to normal." But for many American communities, pre-disaster conditions are far from optimal. Large segments of the U.S. population suffer from preventable health problems, experience inequitable access to services, and rely on overburdened health systems. A return to pre-event conditions in such cases may be short-sighted given the high costs - both economic and social - of poor health. Instead, it is important to understand that the disaster recovery process offers a series of unique and valuable opportunities to improve on the status quo. Capitalizing on these opportunities can advance the long-term health, resilience, and sustainability of communities - thereby better preparing them for future challenges. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters identifies and recommends recovery practices and novel programs most likely to impact overall community public health and contribute to resiliency for future incidents. This book makes the case that disaster recovery should be guided by a healthy community vision, where health considerations are integrated into all aspects of recovery planning before and after a disaster, and funding streams are leveraged in a coordinated manner and applied to health improvement priorities in order to meet human recovery needs and create healthy built and natural environments. The conceptual framework presented in Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters lays the groundwork to achieve this goal and provides operational guidance for multiple sectors involved in community planning and disaster recovery. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters calls for actions at multiple levels to facilitate recovery strategies that optimize community health. With a shared healthy community vision, strategic planning that prioritizes health, and coordinated implementation, disaster recovery can result in a communities that are healthier, more livable places for current and future generations to grow and thrive - communities that are better prepared for future adversities.

This book will prepare social workers, psychologists, and counselors for psychosocial work with individuals and groups who are experiencing distress and trauma resulting from historical and current sociopolitical oppression and violence. Sociopolitical oppression is a sustained, systematic catastrophe, which results from social targeting and discrimination such as racism, sexism and misogyny, homophobia, and anti-immigrant fervor. The consequences are profound and debilitating. In some ways, they are similar to reactions to a single event disaster (e.g., hurricane, earthquake, terrorist attack) but even more insidious because the social targeting and harassment have been ongoing and will continue. As a guide for direct clinical practice, this book offers new models for understanding the nature and consequences of sociopolitical disasters as well as guiding a range of interventions – clinical, psychoeducational, advocacy, and social justice – for use on a micro, mezzo, and macro level. Drawing on indigenous and BIPOC knowledge and scholarship and using case studies from around the world, it criticizes while also adapting and integrating knowledge and theory from the fields of disaster mental health, psychosocial capacity building, trauma therapy, psychodynamic theory, cognitive behavioral theories, and theories of resilience and positive psychology, linking them to an understanding of historical and social oppression, social justice, and intergroup conflict and reconciliation. The book offers critiques of dominant Western, Eurocentric visions of personhood and models of intervention and questions assumptions about the roles of "client" and "worker," proposing more egalitarian, collaborative relationships and extensive use of training of trainers. It will prepare graduate students and practitioners across the helping professions for work that promotes the collective and individual strength and efficacy of affected people, while also responding directly to vulnerability, stress, and trauma.