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Disaster psychology: meaning, areas, applications, training

By Cristiano Antonino On Mar 30, 2023

Disaster psychology refers to the area of psychology that deals with clinical and social interventions in situations of calamity, disaster and emergency/urgency

More generally, it is the discipline that studies individual, group and community behavior in crisis situations.

Disaster psychology, origin and areas

Born from the contributions of military psychology, emergency psychiatry and Disaster Mental Health, it has progressively developed as a set of intervention techniques and, above all, models of “conceptual framing” of cognitive, emotional, relational and psychosocial typical of the emergency.

While the Anglo-Saxon models prefer the cognitive-behavioral approach, highly protocolized and functionalized (above all through the CISM paradigm of Mitchell, of 1983 – and the massive use of the debriefing technique – sometimes in a somewhat uncritical way), the European models (primarily French) propose an integrated vision of emergency intervention, often also on a psychodynamic basis (see in this regard the fundamental contributions of Francǫis Lebigot, Louis Crocq, Michel DeClercq, of the so-called “Val-de-Grace School “).

Non-clinical application areas of disaster psychology

Often erroneously and reductively confused with psychotraumatology and PTSD therapy (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), which are instead specific sub-sectors of psychotherapy, emergency psychology represents a much broader discipline, aimed across the board at recomposing the thought and research contributions from various branches of psychology (clinical, dynamic, social, environmental, mass communication psychology, etc.), adapting them to the study of the psychological processes that take place in “non-ordinary” situations and “acute” events ”.

In summary, while a large part of traditional psychology deals with psychic processes (cognitive, emotional, psychophysiological, etc.) that occur under “normal” conditions, emergency psychology deals with how these processes are transversally remodulated in situations “acute”.

The study of how a child represents himself cognitively, and tries to find coherence in a confused situation (a health emergency, a civil protection evacuation); how interpersonal communication is altered in social interactions that occur in a risk situation; how the dynamics of leadership and interpersonal functioning change within a group involved in a critical incident; of how belonging to a certain cultural system, with its value and symbolic structures, can reshape the individual emotional experience in situations of severe acute stress, are all typical themes of “non-clinical” emergency psychology.

Clinical applications

On the other hand, application areas of emergency psychology on its clinical side are, for example, preventive training for rescue personnel (pre-critical phase), for example with Psychoeducation (PE) and Stress Inoculation Training (SIT) techniques; immediate support interventions on the scene and direct consultancy (peri-critical phase), including defusing and demobilization for the operators involved; any debriefing procedures, follow-up evaluations and medium-term individual, group and family support interventions (post-critical phase).

It should be noted how these emergency psychology clinical interventions can be addressed to the “primary” victims (those directly involved in the critical event), to the “secondary” (relatives and/or direct witnesses of the event) and “tertiary” ( the rescuers who intervened on the scene, who are often exposed to particularly dramatic situations).

Emergency psychologists, given their frequent interaction with the traumatic emotional processes of the particular type of patients they work with, are more at risk than the average of possible vicarious traumatization phenomena, and must therefore in turn implement a series of measures of “self-help” to minimize this risk (for example, specific debriefings, external post-intervention supervision, etc.).

Technical aspects and developments in disaster psychology

An essential part of the professionalism of the emergency psychologist (in addition to the basic skills of a “rescuer”, the specific skills of a psychologist, and the specialist skills of emotional-relational management of crisis situations), must always be the in-depth knowledge of the system of relief, its organization and the different functional roles covered by the other “actors” of the emergency scenario; the need to operate in close contact with very specific “pragmatic” and organizational aspects is in fact one of the fundamental assets of psychological work in an emergency.

The institutional dynamics that occur in crisis situations are specifically studied by the emergency organizational psychology sector

On a social side, the study of “risk perception” and “risk communication” are also an integral part of emergency psychology, particularly useful for understanding the representations that the population has of certain types of risks, and to consequently set up more effective and targeted emergency communications.

In recent years, the international guidelines of the sector have begun to increasingly emphasize the need to integrate the traditional approaches of emergency psychology, mainly oriented towards clinical action (individual or group), with a much more marked attention to psychosocial, community and intercultural dimensions of the intervention carried out.

The emergency psychologist must therefore not only deal with the “clinic” of “individuals isolated from the context”, but also and above all with the systemic management of the psychosocial and community scenario, within which the emergency occurred and the meaning is constructed of the same.

For example, in a major emergency (disasters, calamities, etc.), in addition to the crisis intervention in the immediacy of the emergency, the emergency psychologist must also contribute to the medium-term planning of assistance services to the population; the connection between direct assistance in the tent cities and the liason with the health services; assistance in interactions and conflict management within the community, and between neighboring communities; support activities in the resumption of educational services (assistance of teachers in the resumption of school activity, psychoeducational counseling, etc.); support for psychosocial and community empowerment processes; to psychological support, as families, groups and communities restore their own “sense of the future”, and gradually resume carrying out an autonomous planning of their activities, rebuilding an existential perspective in an often profoundly changed environmental and material context.

At the level of general principles of intervention, adherence to the so-called “Carcassonne Manifesto” (2003) is widespread in Italy:

Suffering is not a disease
Grieving has to go its own way
A little modesty on the part of the mass media
Reactivate the initiative of the affected community
Valuing the resources of people of all ages
The rescuer must take care of himself
The indirect and integrated psychological intervention
The direct psychological intervention of professionals

Each point corresponds to the relative recommendations and operational guidelines, developed with the mechanism of the “consensus panel” at national and European level.

Professional training and identity

The emergency psychologist must therefore not only be a “clinical psychologist”, but a versatile psychologist, able to move flexibly from the clinical dimension to the psychosocial and organizational ones, integrating and adapting the transversal contributions of the different psychological disciplines.

Also in this sense, the emergency psychologist must acquire, during his training, a specific basic competence in the techniques, logic and operating procedures of the rescue system (both technical and medical), in order to be able to operate effectively within them; previous experience and training as a Civil Protection or medical aid volunteer are therefore usually considered preferential qualifications for access to specialist training as an emergency psychologist.

Widespread especially in the Anglo-Saxon world since the early 1980s, the discipline of emergency psychology has also spread to Italy in recent years, where it has begun to become the subject of university teaching in various universities.

Much of the initial promotion and development of Italian emergency psychology, both in the “civil protection” and in the “international cooperation” sectors, was carried out by professional psychological volunteer associations, such as Psychologists for Peoples and SIPEM SoS – Italian Society of Emergency Psychology Social Support.

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