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Children and Families Coping with Disaster

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Abstract

A unique environment in which to capture the effects of stress and coping in children is the aftermath of disaster. At a basic level the disaster environment provides an opportunity to learn how essentially well-adjusted children and families cope with the short- and long-term effects of a sudden, unanticipated, monumental set of stressors. At an applied level, there is a compelling and widespread need for supportive interventions throughout the stages of the disaster and its aftermath if psychological sequelae are to be minimized. The purposes of this chapter are: to define disaster as it pertains to children and families; to examine the nature of stressors associated with various types of disasters; to highlight key findings from the growing literature on disaster’s impact on children; to review recent literature pertaining specifically to stress and coping by children in disasters; and to introduce intervention techniques that have been developed to minimize the ill effects of disasters on their young victims.

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Saylor, C.F., Belter, R., Stokes, S.J. (1997). Children and Families Coping with Disaster. In: Wolchik, S.A., Sandler, I.N. (eds) Handbook of Children’s Coping. Issues in Clinical Child Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2677-0_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2677-0_13

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