Psicologia das emergências e dos desastres: uma pesquisa bibliográfica sobre pressupostos, conceitos e ações na área

Abstract

Throughout the last decades, the demand for intervention by psychologists in emergency and disaster situations has risen in order to fulfill psychosocial needs and deal with people´s mental health affected directly or indirectly. Despite the occurrence of such disasters, the theoretical backdrop of the study of disaster psychology is still scarce and irregularly distributed throughout different countries, so the goal of this research was to delineate core-concepts, working concepts and actions in which Emergency and Disaster Psychology is based on in psychology-specific literature from the last decade (2004-2013). This research is of bibliographical nature and came to be by collecting data from scientific articles in the data bases BVS-ULAPSI, PsycInfo, and Portal CAPES (Periódicos e Teses). The terms used were: emergencies AND psychology; disasters AND psychology; disasters AND emergencies AND psychology; in Portuguese, Spanish and English. Results indicate that the field of emergency and disaster psychology is now a convergence between the fields of Mental Health and Community Psychology, with a growing concern for cultural differences. Disasters must be conceptualized as systemic phenomenon, since they usually involve a number of social actors, victims, survivors, their social networks, the workers in the disaster area and public opinion. A crisis situation is installed which imply both objective and subjective loss as well as complex reverberations throughout time. The concepts used in the area are mostly the same ones found in the literature from the previous decade: trauma associated with stress, trauma, psychopathologies (PTSD, depression, anxiety, panic and substance abuse), coping, as well as development processes and factors such as risk conditions, vulnerability, protection and resilience. These concepts are concerned with prevention and/or the health promotion either by identifying groups and vulnerability conditions or by developing action plans and interventions. What was found, were changes in emphasis and, specially, consolidations in what pertains to how and why to act. Even though we have confirmed that the bibliographical production is unevenly distributed, and the Brazilian production is still small, we have found agreement of perspectives and core-concepts