The mechanisms that associate community social capital with post-disaster mental health: A multilevel model

Many scholars have advocated that the time has come to provide empirical evidence of the mechanisms that associate community social capital with individual disaster mental health. For this purpose we conducted a study (n = 232) one year after a flood (2008) in Morpeth, a rural town in northern Engla...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social science & medicine (1982) 2012-11, Vol.75 (9), p.1715-1720
Main Authors: Wind, Tim R., Komproe, Ivan H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Psychological
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Biological and medical sciences
Disaster
Disasters
England - epidemiology
Female
Floods
Humans
Intervention
Male
Medical sciences
Mental health
Middle Aged
Miscellaneous
Multilevel Analysis
Multilevel modeling
Post traumatic stress disorder
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Risk Factors
Rural Health - statistics & numerical data
Rural Population
Social capital
Social Support
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - epidemiology
Time Factors
U.K
United Kingdom
Young Adult
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Summary:Many scholars have advocated that the time has come to provide empirical evidence of the mechanisms that associate community social capital with individual disaster mental health. For this purpose we conducted a study (n = 232) one year after a flood (2008) in Morpeth, a rural town in northern England. We selected posttraumatic stress as an indicator of disaster mental health. Our multilevel model shows that high community social capital is indirectly salutary for individual posttraumatic stress. In particular, in communities (defined as postcode areas) with high structural social capital, the results suggest that individuals confide in the social context (high cognitive social capital) to address disaster-related demands (high collective efficacy), and employ less individual psychosocial resources (i.e. coping strategies and social support). This “conservation of individual psychosocial resources” in a salutary social context decreases the association between the appraisal of the disaster and posttraumatic stress. As a result of this mechanism, individuals suffer less from posttraumatic stress in communities with high social capital. These findings provide new insights how intervention policies aimed at strengthening both objective and subjective dimensions of social capital may reduce post-disaster mental health. ► In communities in the North of England with high social capital a disaster was less demanding for individual psychosocial resources. ► This “conservation of individual psychosocial resources” is associated with less disaster-related distress. ► This is the first study to empirically elucidate cross-level mechanisms that associate community social capital with disaster mental health. ► The findings imply how interventions that foster structural and cognitive social capital may reduce disaster mental health problems.
ISSN:0277-9536
1873-5347
DOI:10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.06.032