The Topic
My research topic is the impact on people in stressful situations and the psychological consequences of the influence of extreme natural factors on a person. Natural disasters, natural disasters often occur due to the fault of a person, and his activities, as a result of which the ecological balance is disturbed and, as a result, the person himself suffers. The study of various environmental issues cannot be limited to the analysis of the destructive influence of nature and man; it is reasonable to investigate the social and psychological aspects of environmental ecology. It stems from a thread I located in Dave Eggers’ book Zeitoun as it describes the events that happened to real people during the terrible Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 (Pinçonnat 2). This is a story about the life of a single family, both before and after the storm.
The book is written from the words of the Zeitoun family: this is a documentary narrated by Abdulrahman and Katie Zeitoun. They talk about the imprint the tragedy left on them, describing their emotions in a dynamic, strong, and very intense way. The author very clearly paints a picture of the tragedy that the hero had to go through, comparing a natural disaster with a heavenly punishment: “The only thing that came to his mind was the Last Judgment, Noah, and rain, which lasted forty days and forty nights”(Eggers 93). The author points out that mental pain in such situations is more often stronger than physical: “At some point, it occurred to Zeitoun that the cause of the pain was not infection or trauma, but despair” (Eggers 154). Thus, my topic for discussion is reactive emotional states that develop during natural disasters and catastrophes.
Application
This thread applies beyond the book and it is a worthwhile issue to research because it is no coincidence that a person’s psychological well-being is correlated with the influence of environmental factors, including natural ones. Environmental safety, for example, as one of the components of the national security of society and the state, is usually considered in the categories of protection of the natural environment, man, and individual groups of people from the harmful influence of anthropogenic and man-made factors, including natural disasters (Hwang 50). Psychopathological disorders in extreme situations have much in common with clinical disorders that develop under normal conditions. However, there are also significant differences, which makes this a worthwhile issue to research.
Firstly, due to the multiplicity of sudden traumatic factors in extreme situations, there is a simultaneous occurrence of mental disorders in a large number of people. Secondly, the clinical picture in these cases is not strictly individual, as in normal traumatic circumstances, and is reduced to a small number of fairly typical manifestations (Lawrence 506). A special feature is also the fact that, despite the development of psychogenic disorders and the ongoing life-threatening situation, the affected person is forced to continue actively fighting the consequences of a natural disaster for the sake of survival and preserving the lives of loved ones and everyone around them (Lawrence 505). Reactive states that develop during natural disasters and catastrophes belong to a large group of psychogenic disorders, among which neurotic and pathoharacterological reactions, neuroses, and reactive psychoses are distinguished. Their study is necessary since disasters of various kinds occur regularly, and a deep consideration of their psychological consequences can help victims restore emotional health.
Expectations
In the course of my research, I expect to learn differentiated consideration of clinical forms and variants of psychogenic disorders, their differentiation from a wide range of neurosis-like and psychopathic conditions, features of analysis, assessment of the dynamics of the condition, and paraclinical studies. In addition, I would be interested in identifying both non-pathological physiological neurotic phenomena such as stress reactions and adaptive reactions, as well as neurotic reactions, states, and reactive psychoses (Hwang 50). In each of these diagnostic groups, some features determine the medical-organizational and therapeutic tactics, which are also advisable to investigate.
The study of the mental disorders observed in extreme situations, as well as the analysis of the entire complex of rescue, social, and medical measures, make it possible to schematically distinguish three periods of development of the situation in which various psychogenic disorders are observed. The first acute period is characterized by a sudden threat to one’s own life and the death of loved ones (Lawrence 505). During the second period, which takes place during the deployment of rescue operations, figuratively speaking, normal life begins in extreme conditions (Lawrence 506). In the third period, which begins for the victims after their evacuation to safe areas, many have a complex emotional and cognitive processing of the situation, an assessment of their own experiences and feelings, a kind of calculation of losses. This research will take into account many specific features related to the causes of their occurrence and post-sobriety dynamics, as well as the general trends described. Research will be devoted to the study of the emotional characteristics of each of the presented stages.
References
Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun. Vintage, 2010.
Hwang, Jung-Suk. “Post-9/11-Disaster Katrina: Reenacting American Innocence in Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 63, no. 1, 2021, pp. 28–52. Web.
Lawrence, David. “Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative by Kate Parker Horigan.” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 133, no. 530, 2020, pp. 505–507. Web.
Pinçonnat, Crystel. “From Guantánamo to New Orleans. A look at the North American prison system.” Expériences de l’incarcération, Régis Salado et Carine Trevisan, vol. 5, no. 7, 2019, pp. 1–9. Web.