Social group connections support mental health following wildfire

Purpose: As environmental disasters become more common and severe due to climate change, there is a growing need for strategies to bolster recovery that are proactive, cost-effective, and which mobilise community resources.

Aims: We propose that building social group connections is a particularly promising strategy for supporting mental health in communities affected by environmental disasters.

Method: We tested the social identity model of identity change in a disaster context among 627 people substantially affected by the 2019-2020 Australian fires.

Results: We found high levels of post-traumatic stress, strongly related to severity of disaster exposure, but also evidence of psychological resilience. Distress and resilience were weakly positively correlated. Having stronger social group connections pre-disaster was associated with less distress and more resilience 12 to 18 months after the disaster, via three pathways: greater social identification with the disaster-affected community, greater continuity of social group ties, and greater formation of new social group ties. New group ties were a mixed blessing, positively predicting both resilience and distress.

Conclusions: We conclude that investment in social resources is key to supporting mental health outcomes, not just reactively in the aftermath of disasters, but also proactively in communities most at risk.