Principles of biopsychosocial intervention in the ebola crisis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/espsiescpsi.v9i2.13207Keywords:
biopsychosocial intervention, ebola, emergency, risk, public healthAbstract
In August 2014, World Health Organization (WHO) declared the ebola virus disease (EVD) as a public health emergency of international concern. Although this epidemic was already a reality in different African countries, in October of the same year, special attention was paid to the management and communication of the first case of contagion in Europe; specifically, in Spain. This paper provides a proposal of seven principles of biopsychosocial intervention which should be conceived as a useful framework from a point of view of the management of public health and medical emergencies. They are as follow: (1) real and perceived risk are not equivalent; (2) containment, judgment and prudence in communication; (3) the whole is more than the sum of its parts; (4) divergent thinking to anticipate; (5) technical (and psychological) training for professionals; (6) psychological assistance to professionals and victims; and, finally, (7) architecture of a resilient society.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Beck, U. (1998). La sociedad del riesgo: hacia una nueva modernidad. Barcelona: Paidós.
Beck, U. (2002). La sociedad del riesgo global. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Engert, V., Plessow, F., Miller, R., Kirschbaum, C. y Singer, T. (2014). Cortisol increase in empathic stress is modulated by emotional closeness and observation modality. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 45, 192-201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2014.04.005
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J.T. y Rapson, R.L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Klinke, A. y Renn, O. (2002). A new approach to risk evaluation and management: Risk-based, precaution-based, and discourse-based strategies. Risk Analysis, 22, 1071-1094. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1539-6924.00274
Kruglanski, A.W. (2004). The psychology of closed mindedness. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Leaning J. y Guha-Sapir D. (2013). Natural disasters, armed conflict, and public health. The New England Journal of Medicine, 369, 1836-1842. http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra1109877
Lowenthal, M. (1993). Intelligence epistemology: Dealing with the unbelievable. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 6, 319-325. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08850609308435222
Mitchell, J.T. (2007). Innovative, precise and descriptive terms for group crisis support services: A United Nations initiative. International Journal of Emergency Mental Health, 9, 247-252.
Noda, M. (2016). Does affective forecasting change motivation for disaster preparedness? Motivation one month after a hypothetical earthquake. Revista de Psicología Social: International Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 109-136. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02134748.2015.1101315
Norris, F.H., Stevens, S.P., Pfefferbaum, B., Wyche, K.F. y Pfefferbaum, R.L. (2008). Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41,127-150. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10464-007-9156-6
Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS). (2014). Enfermedad por el virus del Ebola. Nota descriptiva 103, abril de 2014.
Renn, O. y Klinke, A. (2004). Systemic risks: A new challenge for risk management. European Molecular Biology Organization, 5, 41-46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.embor.7400227
Sjöberg, L. (2000). Factors in risk perception. Risk Analysis, 20, 1-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0272-4332.00001
Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of risk. Science, 236, 280-285. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.3563507
Taleb, N.C. (2007). The black swan. The Impact of highly improbable. New York: Random House.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
All contents published in Escritos de Psicología are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. All about this license is available in the following link: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0>
Users can copy, use, redistribute, share and exhibit publicly as long as:
- The original source and authorship of the material are cited (Journal, Publisher and URL of the work).
- It is not used for comercial purposes.
- The existence of the license and its especifications are mentioned.
There are two sets of authors’ rights: moral and property rights. Moral rights are perpetual prerogatives, unrenounceable, not-transferable, unalienable, imprescriptible and inembargable. According to authors’ rights legislation, Escritos de Psicología recognizes and respects authors moral rights, as well as the ownership of property rights. The property rights are referred to the benefits that are gained by the use or the dissemination of works. Escritos de Psicología is published in an open access form and it is exclusively licenced by any means for doing or authorising distribution, dissemination, reproduction, , adaptation, translation or arrangement of works.
Authors are responsable for obtaining the necessary permission to use copyrighted images.