Elsevier

Health & Place

Volume 72, November 2021, 102687
Health & Place

Hierarchies of affectedness after disasters

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2021.102687Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Disasters result in a wide range of impacts.

  • Hierarchies of affectedness are formed based on comparisons of disaster impacts.

  • Hierarchies of affectedness have practical implications after disasters.

  • These hierarchies are helpful for some people. For others, they are stressful.

Abstract

Disasters result in a range of impacts that significantly disrupt the health and wellbeing of those affected. After disasters, a hierarchy of affectedness may be explicitly or implicitly developed, where those affected are compared to each other, and to people affected by disasters in other locations. When an individual's sense of place is so significantly disrupted, these hierarchies are critical to improving the understanding of recovery trajectories, including mental health and well-being outcomes. These hierarchies have practical implications that influence the health outcomes of those affected, including eligibility for disaster aid, support services, and the way that people affected by disasters relate to others in their community. This paper expands the ‘hierarchy of affectedness’ concept coined by Andersen (2013) using findings from a qualitative study in Australia and New Zealand. Using a letter writing research method, twenty people who had been impacted by a range of disasters in different locations described what they considered helpful and unhelpful in the recovery. One emergent finding in this study was that hierarchies of affectedness are negotiated between impacted individuals, others affected in the same community, and outsiders. These hierarchies served as a helpful sense-making tool for some people impacted by disasters, while causing considerable secondary stress for others. Based on these findings, we offer an expansion to Andersen's existing model of hierarchies of affectedness in post-disaster settings.

Keywords

Disaster
Disaster recovery
Hierarchies of affectedness
Disaster impacts
Resilience

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