Learned Helplessness, Psychological Wellbeing, and Proenvironment Care Behavior among Victims of Frequent Floods in Kerala.

In 2018 and 2019, there were floods in the coastal regions of Kerala. Many individuals and families were victims on both these occasions; these floods had devastating impact on individual psychological wellbeing, their financial stability, and on overall family wellbeing. Furthermore, many people in vulnerable geographical areas still live in uncertainty and fear. In this context, our study examined whether continuous victimization of natural calamities, like floods in Kerala, leads to the development of learned helplessness and decreased psychological wellbeing among those affected. We also studied whether proenvironment care behavior increased among flood-affected individuals.  We studied 374 heads of families in Kerala, selected through the Quota sampling method. They belonged to the following three groups: (1) flood-affected only once (OFA, = 124), (2) flood-affected twice (TFA, = 124), and (3) never flood-affected (NFA, = 124) households. The key variables of learned helplessness, psychological wellbeing, and proenvironment care behavior were measured using learned helplessness scale, psychological wellbeing scale, and the environmental behavior scale, respectively.  The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyze the data for independent groups.  Learned helplessness was found to be high among the TFA group. Psychological wellbeing and proenvironment care behavior were high among the OFA group as compared with the TFA group. The NFA group had higher learned helplessness in comparison to the OFA group, and psychological wellbeing and proenvironment care behavior were low when compared with the TFA group.  We conclude that surviving a moderate amount of risk is perhaps necessary for better psychological wellbeing and that too many or too few risks in life are detrimental to good psychological health. Immediate psychological support among victims of natural calamities and periodic examination of well-being and psychological interventions among people who are vulnerable for frequent victimization of natural calamities have to part of disaster management related to natural calamities.