For many people, it’s been at least 18 months of non-stop stress, with the COVID-19 pandemic taking up much of the news, accompanied by a steady string of stories on natural disasters, as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and earthquakes hit various regions of the US. With new disasters continuing to pile up, the question was raised in an article in The Atlantic as to whether people are hitting their breaking points and running out of empathy, and how this will affect responses to future disasters or crises where help is needed.
“There is a sense in which people’s coping reserves are sort of finite entities. So if you have to cope a whole lot…you can kind of diminish your resources,” says Joe Ruzel, a PTSD researcher at Palo Alto University told The Atlantic. This fatigue can have notable effects on empathy, generosity and even charitable giving (used as a basis for studies on post-disaster empathy by Kang Lee, a developmental neuroscientist at the University of Toronto).
“They’ve had enough atrocity and stress for the time being, and they just don’t want to hear any more of that,” says psychologist Stephen Taylor to The Atlantic. “My concern is that many people are just tuning this stuff out.”
This lack of empathy can also extend to those working in the world of disaster management. “Emergency preparedness experts today are finally aligning their work with mental health. This can be as simple as practicing empathy,” writes nuclear policy expert Lovely Umayam in Wired.
The article offers tips on how to deal with the emotional fallout of catastrophic events, both for emergency professionals and those outside the field. “Sometimes it’s hard for scientists to be empathic, but you can’t be a good communicator if you don’t know your audience’s feelings and values,” Jessica Wieder, director of Center for Radiation Information and Outreach at the US Environmental Protection Agency, told Wired.
Sources:
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-prepare-disaster-emotionally-mentally/
