Description
For the past 20 years, floods have been by far most frequent natural disaster in Australia (Glasser, 2019). The floods of 2022 highlighted that regional vulnerabilities across the country remain large. This poses a significant threat to the wellbeing of affected individuals and can adversely impact their mental health. The mental health impact of flooding is complex as there are many factors that can contribute to psychological distress after a flood event. Munro et al. (2017) study in the UK reveals that displacement after flooding is associated with higher reported symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder one year after the event. Less apparent, however, is how these impacts may differ for men and women, young and elderly, people with low socioeconomic status, and those with pre-determined health conditions, and whether these effects can be mitigated by taking specific preventive measures, such as home insurance, or changing behaviors and non-cognitive attributes prior to the event.
The current paper provides new evidence on the impact of excessive rainfall events on psychological distress and mental health of the Australian population, paying particular attention to differences in the estimated effects for various age groups and genders. The paper investigates the psychological distress impacts of excessive rainfall fluctuations among Australian population by linking historical rainfall data (2001-2022) at the postcode level with the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics (HILDA) in Australia panel survey. It compares the rainfall disaster experiences of younger, prime, and older adults to assess their relative risk of psychological distress and mental health decline following a flood event. The results contribute to an emergent literature that seeks to better understand the factors that contribute to resilience in times of flood events. To understand resilient outcomes among different age groups in adversity, one must identify protective factors and subsequent protective processes influencing successful outcomes despite specified negative risks. The current paper utilizes resilience as a non-cognitive trait that can mitigate the devastating risks brought on by flood disasters. The panel is of unusually high quality and consistently collects information about psychological distress, mental health, non-cognitive traits and allows us to directly identify individuals whose homes were either damaged or destroyed. The data also make it possible to monitor whether people who have experienced floods leave the area or stay in it, which is crucial for policymaking because it can help the government decide how to build new infrastructure in flood-prone areas in the future.
The findings confirm that the negative effects of the rainfall disasters on mental health are stronger for young adults, and particularly for young men. The findings also confirm that resilience as a non-cognitive trait is an influential moderator, with individuals low in resilience having the largest negative effect sizes. This seems to confirm popular narratives concerning the types of individuals most vulnerable to increased external stressors.
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