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Review
. 2021 May 19:9:658528.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.658528. eCollection 2021.

The Role of Social Determinants in Mental Health and Resilience After Disasters: Implications for Public Health Policy and Practice

Wanying Mao  1 , Vincent I O Agyapong  1
Affiliations
Review

The Role of Social Determinants in Mental Health and Resilience After Disasters: Implications for Public Health Policy and Practice

Wanying Mao et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

In this general literature review, we will explore the impacts and contribution of social determinants to mental health and resiliency following both natural and man-made disasters. Natural disasters, such as wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes, as well as man-made disasters, such as civil wars, have been known to inflict significant damage to the mental health of the victims. In this paper, we mainly explore some most studied vulnerability and protective social determinant factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, socials support and socioeconomic status for the mental health and resiliency in survivors of such disasters. Several other possible factors such as previous trauma, childhood abuse, family psychiatric history, and subsequent life stress that were explored by some studies were also discussed. We conducted a literature search in major scientific databases, using keywords such as: mental health, social determinants, disasters, wildfires, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and resilience. We discuss the implications for public health policy and practice.

Keywords: disaster; mental health; public health policy; resilience; social determinant.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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