HealthNet TPO, Department of Research and Development, 1074 VJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Soc Sci Med. 2012 Nov;75(9):1715-20. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.06.032. Epub 2012 Jul 27.
Many scholars have advocated that the time has come to provide empirical evidence of the mechanisms that associate community social capital with individual disaster mental health. For this purpose we conducted a study (n = 232) one year after a flood (2008) in Morpeth, a rural town in northern England. We selected posttraumatic stress as an indicator of disaster mental health. Our multilevel model shows that high community social capital is indirectly salutary for individual posttraumatic stress. In particular, in communities (defined as postcode areas) with high structural social capital, the results suggest that individuals confide in the social context (high cognitive social capital) to address disaster-related demands (high collective efficacy), and employ less individual psychosocial resources (i.e. coping strategies and social support). This "conservation of individual psychosocial resources" in a salutary social context decreases the association between the appraisal of the disaster and posttraumatic stress. As a result of this mechanism, individuals suffer less from posttraumatic stress in communities with high social capital. These findings provide new insights how intervention policies aimed at strengthening both objective and subjective dimensions of social capital may reduce post-disaster mental health.
许多学者主张，现在是时候提供实证证据来证明社区社会资本与个人灾难心理健康之间的关联机制了。为此，我们在英格兰北部农村小镇莫珀斯（Morpeth）进行了一项研究（n=232），该研究是在洪灾后一年（2008 年）进行的。我们选择创伤后应激作为灾难心理健康的指标。我们的多层次模型表明，高社区社会资本对个体创伤后应激具有间接的有益影响。具体来说，在具有高结构性社会资本的社区（定义为邮政编码区域）中，结果表明，个人在社会环境中寻求信任（高认知社会资本）来应对与灾难相关的需求（高集体效能），并较少利用个人心理社会资源（即应对策略和社会支持）。这种在有益的社会环境中“保护个人心理社会资源”的做法，减少了对灾难的评估与创伤后应激之间的关联。由于这种机制，在社会资本较高的社区中，个人遭受创伤后应激的程度较低。这些发现为干预政策提供了新的见解，这些政策旨在加强社会资本的客观和主观维度，可能会减少灾后心理健康问题。
