A Holistic Theoretical Framework for Studying Disaster Mental Health

Many studies investigating the relationship between disaster exposure and public mental health in the past several decades have examined invalid combinations of psychosocial factors. Contributing to this problem, disaster researchers have reported inconsistent results regarding the relationships between multiple psychosocial factors. Consequently, numerous theories and concepts of stress have been developed, which have produced inconsistent results regarding the functions of psychosocial factors. Meanwhile, the field of stress studies has advanced considerably by replicating findings regarding the dynamics of a few psychosocial factors in a given theoretical model. This article proposes the rigorous application of a heuristic framework in stress research, with a selective choice of relevant psychosocial factors. This framework should be used to construct theoretical models for disaster studies by combining advancements in both stress research and disaster mental health research. This article first describes the theoretical similarities and differences between the 2 fields. Second, a holistic theoretical framework is suggested for disaster mental health studies, including discussion of the framing of appropriate statistical models with a small number of additional variables. Third, the usefulness of a holistic theoretical framework is demonstrated by presenting findings obtained from a cross-sectional study.