Well-being and mental health in the aftermath of disasters: A social constructionist approach

Abstract

In the last couple of decades, the debates on the ways of conceptualizing disaster trauma and psychosocial intervention clearly indicate the need for involving a multidisciplinary approach in this process. This chapter outlines the reasons for such a paradigm shift and focuses on the utility of the social constructionist paradigm that endorses a multidisciplinary approach to study the mental health of disaster survivors. The use of the concepts of suffering and healing have been emphasized to understand the survivors’ experiences of threat to or reformulation of well-being and this has been attempted through the examples such experiences studied with the help of ethnographic or other qualitative approach in different communities of the world. The chapter ends with a deliberation on the ways the psychosocial interventions can be made more meaningful for the survivors through collaborations among the survivors and helpers within the mental health services with a critical understanding of the cultural and socio-political contexts in post-disaster settings.