University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Emergency Medicine Department, Worcester, MA, United States.
Madigan Army Medical Center, Tacoma, WA, United States.
Front Public Health. 2024 Aug 27;12:1396517. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1396517. eCollection 2024.
Maladaptive behaviors during a disaster refer to actions that do not benefit the individual or society. Quarantelli highlights several maladaptive behaviors myths associated with disasters: widespread antisocial behavior, passivity, role conflict or abandonment, and sudden widespread mental health breakdowns (1). Despite early work reporting these myths, the common perception is that maladaptive behaviors such as rioting, looting, panic, and criminal conduct are prevalent in the wake of disasters. This is despite research by de Ville de Goyet and Arnold which has called on public officials and the media to stop propagating false disaster myths (2, 3). The classic academic response has been that this is a misconception and that, in fact, such behaviors are a very small part of the overall disaster and are mostly non-existent. Misconceptions about the prevalence of maladaptive behaviors can lead to inappropriate resource allocation, such as allocating extra police officers to prevent looting when the overall crime rate for the most part, decreases during disasters (4). Furthermore, while there are several persistent maladaptive behaviors myths, this is confounded by the presence of actual negative behaviors post disaster: false damage claims, insurance fraud, illegally obtaining relief supplies, failure to provide contracted repair services, hoarding of essential items, psychological trauma (which can lead to intergenerational transmission of the disaster memory) and medications and price gouging (5).When reading lay-press articles about recent disasters, it appears that these behaviors are on the rise. This raises the question: Has there been a change in the basic human reaction to disasters and are maladaptive behaviors on the rise? This review article focuses on case studies from three natural disasters: Hurricanes Hugo and Katrina, and the Haiti Earthquake. The goal of this review article is to evaluate these three natural disasters for evidence of maladaptive behaviors.
灾难中的适应不良行为是指对个人或社会无益的行为。Quarantelli 强调了与灾难相关的几种适应不良行为的神话：广泛的反社会行为、被动、角色冲突或放弃，以及突然广泛的心理健康崩溃（1）。尽管早期有报告这些神话的工作，但普遍的看法是，在灾难发生后，骚乱、抢劫、恐慌和犯罪行为等适应不良行为很普遍。尽管 de Ville de Goyet 和 Arnold 的研究呼吁公职人员和媒体停止传播虚假的灾难神话（2,3），但情况仍然如此。经典的学术回应是，这是一种误解，事实上，这种行为在整个灾难中只是很小的一部分，而且大多不存在。对适应不良行为普遍性的误解可能导致资源分配不当，例如在大多数情况下，整体犯罪率下降时，分配额外的警察来防止抢劫（4）。此外，尽管存在几种持续存在的适应不良行为神话，但这与灾难后实际存在的负面行为相混淆：虚假损害索赔、保险欺诈、非法获取救援物资、未能提供合同维修服务、囤积必需品、心理创伤（这可能导致灾难记忆的代际传递）以及药物和哄抬物价（5）。当阅读关于最近灾难的大众媒体文章时，似乎这些行为正在上升。这就提出了一个问题：人类对灾难的基本反应是否发生了变化，适应不良行为是否在增加？本文综述重点关注了三起自然灾害的案例研究：飓风雨果和卡特里娜飓风，以及海地地震。本文综述的目的是评估这三起自然灾害是否存在适应不良行为的证据。
