Many people directly experiencing a major natural disaster such as an earthquake will experience psychosocial effects – both individual psychological effects impacting on how people feel and social effects impacting on how they relate to each other. Indeed, such effects are inevitable and a normal part of human psychology. However, there is considerable variation in individual and social responses. Nevertheless, it is fair to state that the potential exists for the emotional effects of disaster to cause as great a degree of suffering as do the physical effects such as injury, destruction of infrastructure and loss of income. In fact, they are often inter-related. Indeed, it is clear that recovery is primarily judged in terms of people feeling that they are coping with their lives and livelihood, not just in physical terms.
The problem is that every disaster is somewhat different. The Christchurch series of earthquakes is more complex than (say) a hurricane in that there is an inherent threat in the continuing aftershocks that can last for many months, exposing people to recurrent acute stress, while at the same time chronic stress is imposed by the on-going human, economic and social costs. A distinct feature of this event is that the initial M7.1 earthquake caused sufficient damage to induce significant traumatic stress in its own right and then, rather late in the recovery cycle, the M6.3 earthquake returned many people back to the beginning of the cycle.
These aftershocks may well extend the recovery process. Some of the population may experience on-going feelings of insecurity, uncertainty, loss of trust in scientific information, continued hyper-vigilance and disturbed sleep, As we know, this disaster is also characterized by considerable numbers of people leaving the area. This population will also show psychosocial consequences of dislocation that may need to be addressed.
Classically, four phases are described after a disaster, although separating them out as distinct phases with sharp transitions is somewhat artificial:
(1) An initial heroic phase, in which people help and don’t count the "costs".
(2) A honeymoon phase in which people see some help arriving and feel that the situation will improve.
(3) A third phase which is somewhat awkwardly and unhelpfully termed the ‘disillusionment phase’ in which people realize how long recovery will take and become angry and frustrated. I would prefer to call it the long-term recovery and rehabilitation phase.
(4) Finally people return to a new equilibrium, but we must understand that this is a long-term process with no clear endpoint in that things can never return to exactly what they were before the disaster, although people will find a ‘new normal’.
Phases 1 and 2 in Christchurch are over and we are now into phase 3, which can be expected, based on the scientific literature, to last for most people between 4 and 9 months. But the length and severity of this phase can be affected by the nature of the on-going response.