This article reports on effects of two earthquakes in Mexico on adolescents attending middle school. The earthquakes struck in close succession during the implementation of a school-based prevention program, providing an opportunity to assess emotional distress due to the earthquakes and whether the life skills taught in the program affected how…

Emergency preparedness is a fast developing field of education driven by the numerous disasters worldwide with more recent notable examples including the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the US in 2001, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the London bombings in 2005, the earthquake in China in 2008, the Great East Japan…

Background: The need to establish an evidence base for early child disaster interventions has been long recognized. Objective: This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the empirical research on early disaster mental health interventions delivered to children within the first 3 months post event. Methods: Characteristics and findings of the…

Disasters can affect a youth's physical and emotional well-being. They disrupt everyday life by displacing individuals and families, destroying homes, and splintering communities (Gewirtz et al. in J Marital Fam Ther 34(2):177--192, 2008; La Greca and Silverman in Child Dev Perspect 3(1):4-10, 2009). School-based interventions are one approach to…

This study focused on designing a flood-risk education program to enhance 15-year-old students' flood-risk perception. In the flood-risk education program, learning processes were modeled in such a way that the arousal of moderate levels of fear should prompt experiential and analytical information processing. In this way, understanding of flood…

The 2010-2012 Christchurch (Canterbury) earthquakes in New Zealand caused loss of life and psychological distress in residents throughout the region. In 2011, student dancers of the Hagley Dance Company and dance professionals choreographed the performance "Move: A Seismic Journey" for the Christchurch Body Festival that explored…

Education is an important tool to increase the capacity of local government officials for community flood adaptation. To address flood adaptation and post-flood stream management in municipalities, Cornell Cooperative Extension and collaborators developed an educational program to increase municipal officials' knowledge about how to work…

Objective: This article presents the Journey of Hope (JoH), a school-based intervention for children who have experienced a collective trauma such as a natural disaster. Through the use of group work, the JoH focuses on building coping skills and enhancing protective factors to help children recover. Method: This quasi-experimental research…

On April 27, 2011 a series of tornadoes tore through the southeast United States. Sixty-four percent of the counties in the state of Alabama were directly affected by these storms. After a natural disaster, children who are directly or indirectly affected show numerous intense emotional reactions. Recovery programs can be set up to enable them to…

Evidence that posttraumatic growth is a potential outcome in the process of recovery from trauma and natural disaster highlights the importance of social environmental factors that encourage a growth response in survivors. This art-based research project followed up on a group of youth survivors (N = 11) of the 2007 earthquake in the Ica region of…

After traumatic events, such as a natural disaster, children who are directly or indirectly affected by the event often have a number of intense emotional reactions. It is important for educators to understand common emotional and psychological responses to disastrous events and to try to help. This article describes a physical activity program…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of coping knowledge for emergency preparedness in Korean elementary school students. A school-based coping education program was provided seven times to 271 fourth- and fifth-grade students in two urban schools by researchers with the school nurses. The Process Model of Stress and Coping and…

This study tested the effects of a school-based test anxiety intervention among ethnic minority youth. The study used a prospective intervention design with a sample of (N = 94) ninth graders from New Orleans exposed to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Thirty youth with elevated test anxiety completed a primarily behavioral (e.g., relaxation…

The December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami wrecked thousands of lives, homes, and livelihoods--losses that could have been avoided with timely and better information. A resource such as information is needed at a fundamental level much like water, food, medicine, or shelter. This dissertation examines the development of the Thai information…

The Asian Tsunami struck Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004. Sri Lanka was the second worst affected country after Indonesia, and this natural disaster killed in excess of 35,000 people and displaced over 1 million. The article explores the Tsunami Disaster Management Program developed by one Sri Lankan university: the Postgraduate Institute of…