Haiti Earthquake 2010: Psychosocial Impacts
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CASE STUDY HAITI EARTHQUAKE 2010: PSYCHOSOCIAL IMPACTS James M. Shultz1, Louis Herns Marcelin2, Zelde Espinel1, Sharon B. Madanes3, Andrea Allen4, Yuval Neria5 1 Center for Disaster & Extreme Event Preparedness (DEEP Center), University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA 2 Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development (INURED), Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA 3 Columbia University, New York, NY, USA 4 Barry University, Miami Shores, FL, USA 5 Columbia University, The New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA
Synonyms Disaster behavioral health; Disaster health; Disaster mental and behavioral health; Disaster mental health Overview At 4:53 PM local time (21:53 GMT) on January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince and surrounding area, killing an estimated 222,570–316,000 persons (Inter Agency Standing Committee, 2010; CBC News, 2011). The Haiti 2010 earthquake is noteworthy among natural disasters that subject the affected human population to intense psychological stressors (Table 1). Norris and colleagues (2002) posit that disasters that possess two or more of the following four characteristics are likely to create significant mental health consequences for the affected community: (1) large numbers of deaths and/or injuries, (2) widespread destruction and property
damage, (3) disruption of social support and ongoing economic problems, and (4) “human” contribution to the disaster’s causation. By the numbers, the Haiti 2010 earthquake possesses all of these attributes: (1) mass mortality, (2) near-total physical destruction over large areas, (3) social dislocation to a point bordering on societal collapse, and (4) ample evidence of human amplification of the earthquake’s harm (preventable deaths and severe injuries attributable to dangerous and derelict standards for housing construction; uncommonly widespread and brutal interpersonal violence directed against earthquake survivors in the aftermath) (Shultz et al., 2011). Profiling the Haiti 2010 earthquake will provide insights into the psychologically traumatizing capacity of this exceptional event (Shultz et al., 2011). The psychological consequences of the Haiti 2010 earthquake can be portrayed across five salient dimensions: (1) disaster type, (2) severity, (3) duration, (4) mortality, and (5) scope and social context of psychological impact (Table 2).
Disaster type: event description and disaster consequences Haiti occupies the western third of the island of Hispaniola, one of the Greater Antilles islands, located between Puerto Rico and Cuba. The Haiti 2010 earthquake occurred south of the east-west trending “strike-slip” fault zone separating the massive North American tectonic plate (to the north) from the Caribbean plate (to the south). Relative to the North American plate, the Caribbean plate “slips” about 20 mm to the east each year. In Haiti, the plate boundary between these two plates presents a more complex scenario; histo
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