Psychological Trauma, Stress, and Social Support Essay

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Sandra Sweat
Dr. Maxine Thompson
SOC 465
4 April 2013 According to the mass media, Cockerham states that people are subjected to large scale of disasters like national weather disasters, bankruptcy, losses of loved ones, and many more that causes individuals to harbor feelings of grief, loss, anguish and despair. Individuals would fall into having mental illnesses once that disaster occurs, they would end up developing depression, anxiety, apathy, post-traumatic stress insomnia, emotional instability and any other mental disorder. Those who were affected by the disastrous event, we are able to tie in the work of Brenner's economical downturns. Brenner argued that hospitalizations that harbor mental illness patients tend to raise in the moments of hard economical times. The reasoning behind this could be due to the possibility that people that are having such a difficult time surviving have been stretched out too far. To explain this deeper, it basically means that individuals who were having a tough time making ends meet were now out of luck with the conditions that was left behind by the storm, which caused tremendous amount of stress upon the individuals and eventually lead to breakdowns and causing to be diagnosed with mental illnesses. People with special needs, mainly the children and the elderly were mostly affected by this. According to Cockerham, the elderly were having a tough time adapting to the life after the disaster. During such disasters, those who are hospitalized or had barely any mobility to move from their beds were left behind and left to die during the storm, any that survived were affected harshly. On the other side of this argument, those who have been predisposed to stress in their previous lives have been more flexible to stressful events like this. Social support in the form of families and friends can help with this. Social support helps with lessening the impact of stress and minimizing the potential for severe depression and other forms of mental disorder in individuals. Studies show that the contribution of social support helps reduce stress and those who feel supported from others dealing with stress tend to have a much stronger sense of well-being than those who lack support. The relationship between the economic change and rates of mental disorder is not simple. It is never clear whether economic downturns provoke mental illness or merely uncovers those who are already mentally ill or whether it changes the moment of the greatest impact. This is a cause and effect relationship between a major event such as an economic depression and the mental illness of the individual because of the wide range of variables that may intervene in the individual's situation, in this case, Sandy. Community support is important as well, Cockerham notes that people who work together in order to rebuild and support each other emotionally and psychologically can help build that well-being. The collectivity of positivism helps as well. There are unique stressors that limit material resources available, causing stress regarding hunger and poverty for lower income individuals. People who have to find a way to stay positive and supportive during the aftermath and rebuilding. In thinking of a possible hypothesis, we can relate to the differential vulnerability which is differences in resources like coping, constitutional, social and personal and left some people more vulnerable to effects of stress. Researchers have hypothesized that the psychological vulnerability of these groups may be due to the joint occurrence of many stress events like Sandy and few psychological resources with which to cope with such events. Women; older adults; unmarried persons; those with less education, income, and occupational prestige; married women; and unmarried women are found significantly more distressed by the experience of life events than their sociodemographic counterparts. That is, the psychological vulnerability of low
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