DISASTERSLearning from Disaster: Mental Health Researchers Offer Insights on Overcoming Trauma

Published 1 September 2022

On a December morning in 1988, a massive earthquake tore through northern Armenia, devastating the small Caucasus country. Over 25,000 died – two-thirds of whom were children. As part of the international relief efforts that followed, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals from all over the world traveled to Armenia to kick off a remarkable and sustained mental health relief and research program which would last for two decades.

On a December morning in 1988, a massive earthquake tore through northern Armenia, devastating the small Caucasus country. Over 25,000 died – two-thirds of whom were children– while an estimated 100,000 people were injured and half a million were left without homes. 

As part of the international relief efforts that followed, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals from all over the world traveled to Armenia. The response would kick off a remarkable and sustained mental health relief and research program that included UCLA doctors Armen Goenjian, Alan Steinberg and Robert Pynoos. 

That long-running effort lasted over two decades and provided invaluable insights into designing and implementing mental health programs after major traumatic events. Those lessons have grown more important amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing plague of gun violence, and the increasing threat of climate-related disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and floods, say the UCLA researchers, who detailed their insights in a new book, Lessons Learned in Disaster Mental Health: The Earthquake in Armenia and Beyond

Their book describes the clinical experiences of therapists who worked with survivors, the findings of cutting-edge studies, organizational challenges and successes, and memoirs from the most comprehensive post-earthquake mental health recovery program conducted after a catastrophic natural disaster. The project was sponsored by the Armenian Relief Society of Western United States.

“The enduring impact of treatment 25 years after the earthquake provided to children and adolescents at 1½ years after the earthquake showed the importance of implementing school-based trauma-grief focused interventions that can benefit a generation of adolescents as they transition to adulthood,” said Dr. Goenjian, the director of the project known as the Psychiatric Outreach Program. 

According to Dr. Steinberg, almost all reported follow-up treatment outcome studies have been conducted two years or less after the disaster. Only a handful have followed up for five years.

“We found that, in the long run, strong social support also reduced the likelihood of people developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression; while adversities such as lack of housing, heating, electricity and transportation increased the risk for chronicity,” according to Dr. Goenjian. Managing these various factors should be part of a comprehensive relief program, he said.