Scientific literature on disasters in psychology: A review of national literature

Abstract

The news about the occurrence of disasters has become part of the daily life of Brazilians in recent years, given the high amount of extreme climatic events aggravated by environmental degradation and severe social problems. This study presents a systematic review of the scientific literature produced in Brazil on Disaster Psychology, in order to know how the event and all the social phenomena inherent to it are being taken as an object of study by Psychology, focusing on socio-environmental disasters. The review retrieved 11 articles in the databases Bireme and SciELO, considering as inclusion criteria: articles produced in Brazil, temporality between 2005 and 2015 and that only discussed socioenvironmental disasters. The results show that the disaster is still a challenge for the study of psychology, with few studies that are mostly theoretical. It is observed that there is a profitable field for the construction of knowledge in the theme.