How Public Health Systems Build Resilience During Crisis Military & Veteran News, Commentary, Culture

Another 13–21% show recovery responses (also emergent resilience37), that is, initial increases in mental distress followed by later decreases. This idea is based on recent ideas in resilience research11,22,23,33 and has been adapted for the multilevel resilience factor approach of this review. Beyond differences between those stressors, they share relevant similarities as they affect a large number of people relatively synchronously and have potentially long-lasting consequences for societies2, leading to increased stress for many individuals3,4.

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It is thus vital to consider how to alleviate pandemic‐related social disconnection. In doing so, the findings contribute to a growing body of work demonstrating the utility of the Social Cure approach (C. Haslam et al., 2018) for identifying specific pathways through which community‐based helping benefits volunteers’ well‐being (Bowe et al., 2020; Gray & Stevenson, 2020). This was especially evident during the COVID‐19 pandemic’s early stages, when there was an upsurge in the delivery of mutual aid via community‐based volunteering (Drury & Tekin Guven, 2020; Monbiot, 2020). During times of challenge, these unifying group experiences also bring about a valuable resource in the form of prosocial behaviours (Alfadhli et al., 2019; Vezzali et al., 2016). Model depicting the significant indirect effect of giving coordinated help on anxiety via community identification and sense of unity during the pandemic. Coordinated help‐giving was a positive predictor of community identification, whilst community identification was a positive predictor of unity, and unity was a negative predictor of anxiety.

For example, applying the model developed to ask, who is engaged in monitoring, how is risk monitored, how are community and their leadership identified, how is data collected and monitored in real time across a range of different stakeholders, and how are lessons from previous emergencies used to plan for future emergencies. As Jackson et al. and Kelly et al. argue, the expectation that community organisations, networks or groups can bear the brunt of response efforts, particularly through volunteer labour, can exacerbate poverty and inequality. A narrow view of the diverse meanings of the community may overlook inherent power dynamics and communication hierarchies that affect trust. First, trust and collaboration with and within communities arise as important themes, confirming previous findings 77, 117.

• Dangerous areas (i.e. mountainous) saw a decrease in community SC in comparison to safer areas following the earthquake (an effect the authors attributed to the need to seek prolonged refuge), whereas participants from the safer areas (which are home to younger residents with a higher population density) saw an increase in SC .
• There was heterogeneity in the assessment of resilience and study populations.
• There were inconsistencies across research which examined the impact of abstract SC (i.e. not refined into bonding/bridging or structural/cognitive) on mental wellbeing.

Research question 1: Which societal-level challenges and crises have been examined in OECD member states?

Though it is a much sought after intervention by both government and non-government organizations, there is no commonly agreed upon definition of the same across the studies conducted addressing the community resilience. The interventions to promote resilience are conceptualized on the premise that certain psychosocial factors contributing to resilience are modifiable. The assessment tools described in this section are limited to self-administered scales addressing individual resilience; scales related to community, social, and family variables are not covered. Positive emotions that are considered a part of mental health are indicators of resilience and are also said to be a part of trait resilience. It is seen that individual characteristics such as optimism and internal locus of control help the individuals to be resilient when faced with negative life events and lead to better and improved mental and physical health (Burns & Anstey, 2010; Vaishnavi et al., 2007). Hence, research taking this perspective has identified resilience as a stable predictor of mental health, predicting both positive and negative outcomes of mental health such as life satisfaction, positive affect, and depression, and anxiety.

There clearly are some particular protective and resilience-enhancing factors that are implicated over and over again as important across a wide variety of circumstances, such as children having a protective parent on the scene who is functioning pretty well and protecting the child. I think it is important to reflect on the fact that here we are at an international meeting about traumatic stress and we are having a plenary on the topic of resilience, not trauma. Resources are incredibly important, although we don’t talk about them much when https://www.cdcfoundation.org/howrightnow we talk about resilience because they’re basic, not quite as sexy, and building resources costs a lot of money. We can also constructively think of “structural resilience”—building robust structures in society that provide people with the wherewithal to make a living, secure housing, access good education and health care, and realize their human potential (Ager, Annan, & Panter-Brick, 2013). For me, that’s really the essence of a cultural and social perspective on resilience. As I hear about the biological perspectives on resilience and the developmental mastery perspective on resilience, I want to add a few words on a cultural perspective on resilience.

Posttraumatic Stress

This pattern resembles a pyramid with its broad foundation being the family, followed by other primary support groups, such as friends, neighbors, and co-workers, followed by formal agencies and other persons outside of the victim’s immediate circle. Social support, whether received (enacted) or perceived (expected), varies on two critical dimensions (Kaniasty and Norris 2000). Gillespie and Murty studied a disaster response network in a Midwestern setting and identified both isolates and peripherals among the organizations that had capacities and experience that were essential for the functioning of the network as a whole. Gillespie and Murty (1994) noted that the failure of relief organizations to work together results in “cracks” in the postdisaster service delivery network, whereas an effective service delivery system provides a complete set of services and linkages in which such cracks do not appear. The happy medium may be loosely coupled organizations (to better respond to local needs) that are able to coordinate or collaborate (to facilitate access to their resources). The efficiency of hubs may actually decrease resilience because if the hub is compromised, the entire system fails (Allenby and Fink 2005).