Abstract
There is continuing controversy about the nature and extent of psychological effects of major disasters (McFarlane, 1985; Quarantelli, 1985). The opinions range from those who state that disasters have little or no immediate effect (Melick, 1978; Quarantelli & Dynes, 1977) to those who state that disasters have significant long-term consequences (Gleser, Green, & Winget, 1981; McFarlane, 1988; Shore, Tatum, & Vollmer, 1986). This controversy may arise from a number of reasons. First, the research methodologies used to study disasters have many associated problems (Green, 1982). Often, highly selective subsamples of victims have been studied, for example, all the victims evacuated to one area (Parker, 1975). Not infrequently, poorly validated instruments have been used which make the interpretation and clinical significance of the results difficult to establish. Furthermore, many of the early studies failed to describe adequately the experience of the individual victims in the disaster or relate the levels of exposure to the intensity of symptoms. This is an important issue because certain characteristics of the disaster, such as the seriousness and level of the impact, the speed of the onset, the duration of the disaster, and social preparedness of the community to handle the disaster, may all be important determinants of the outcome (see Chapter 27, in this volume, for a discussion of these issues).
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McFarlane, A.C., Hua, C. (1993). Study of a Major Disaster in the People’s Republic of China. In: Wilson, J.P., Raphael, B. (eds) International Handbook of Traumatic Stress Syndromes. The Plenum Series on Stress and Coping. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2820-3_42
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2820-3_42
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