Roundtable Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Resilience, Perceived Social Support, Family Cohesion and Coping Among Flood Victims of Kerala (#273)

Jesty Sunny 1 , Lijo Kochakadan Joy 1 , Arya Arun Menon 1 , Ann Joseph 1 , Femin Azeez 1 , Noble Chacko 1
  1. Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, kalamassery, Cochin, India, Ernakulam, KERALA, India

Prevalence of mental health problems is found to be three times higher among disaster victims than that of general population. The immediate effects of disaster can bring shock, feelings of insecurity, post-traumatic stress and other serious mental issues. The month of August brought excess rainfall to Kerala which resulted in one of the biggest flood the state ever witnessed over a century. The flood statistics revealed that it caused the death of 384 individuals, displaced 1.078 million people, 50,000 houses were washed away, 80,000km of road damaged, 39 bridges got damaged and over 3,200 relief camps were set up during the disaster. The objective of the study is to find out the relationship of perceived social support, family cohesion and coping with resilience among flood victims. The study is conducted among 200 families from the flood affected areas of Kerala. The tools used are FACES Scale (Olson, 2003), Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et.al, 2008) and Brief Cope Inventory (Carver, 1997). Multiple regression will be used for data analysis. The present study has implications for psychologists and counsellors working with the disaster management to have a clear cut idea about the factors that affect the resilience of the flood victims.