Before(my feelings,during the pandemic/disaster)
Answers
Answer:
Purpose: In this article, I explore emotions, trauma, and mental health issues residents experienced after tornadoes in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Joplin, Missouri in 2011. Methods: The research is based on 162 interviews and fieldwork from 2013-2015. I draw from literature on social suffering and trauma to ask how experiencing mental health and trauma changes how people make sense of their social worlds. Results: I discuss four common themes: 1. Emotions in immediate aftermath, 2. Relationship strain, 3. Mental health problems, and 4. Emotions in long-term recovery. Throughout the article, I pay attention to the bodily experiences of suffering and trauma. Conclusion: I argue experiencing mental health and suffering may be a critical perspective—one that can shed light on being in the world in ways that other perspectives may be less suitable to do.
KEYWORDS: Emotion, mental health problems, disaster recovery, social suffering, trauma
Introduction
In 2011, in Joplin, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama an EF5 and EF4, respectively, tore through each of these cities causing significant losses of life, property, and much suffering. That disaster engenders or exacerbates mental health problems has been well documented in the literature and is one the most cited examples of an event that can cause post-traumatic stress disorder (Davidson & McFarlane, 2006; Goldmann & Galea, 2014; Norris, Friedman, & Watson, 2002b; Norris et al., 2002a). In this article, I examine emotions, mental health problems, and suffering that were the result of these tornadoes. I draw on interviews with 162 people in both locations and fieldwork that spans from 2013–2015. My overall argument is that mental health problems, emotions, and suffering are something people experience in their bodies. In making this argument, I depart from most biological and social scientific accounts of mental health, as if it is just something “out there”. I tie the limited scholarship in the social sciences about what mental health problems actual feel like to scholarship on social suffering. Moreover, as Kleinman, Das, and Lock (1997) contend, suffering is produced by the social order. However, what makes suffering seem individualized, or something that could cause stigma, is due to the overall tendency in our culture and medicine to compartmentalize mental health and suffering as a personal problem. In this article, I ask: How are emotions, suffering, and mental health problems experienced after disaster and how do these experiences help residents make sense of their lives in the post-disaster landscape?
It is important to keep in mind that social suffering and emotions produced by weather events is in no way natural. This is the case for at least three reasons. First, existing inequalities or inequalities that are created by tornadoes are not inevitable—that is, they come from somewhere. Second, disastrous weather events are linked to human-made (and socially produced) climate change (McKibben, 2011). Though it is difficult to claim definitively any particular storm is caused by climate change, there is a correlation, and climate scientists are nearly unanimous in their predictions that disasters will rise in incidence and severity as human-induced climate change occurs. Third, though suffering is often thought to be private, it has very real effects on relationships and how people make meaning of their lives and their suffering.
Literature review
In this literature review, I discuss subjective experiences with mental health, interdisciplinary treatments of social suffering, and the body and emotions. Sociologist David Karp’s (1996) book Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness is an important starting point. While reading other scholarship (Aneshensel, Phelan, & Bierman, 2013; Johnson, Turner, & Link, 2014), I was repeatedly frustrated because many social scientists and some practitioners do not explicitly document the subjective experiences of mental health problems. Instead, most work tends to hold to positivistic interpretations and measurements of mental illness. Though there is the understanding that mental illness is socially constructed, the over-reliance on positivism to interpret and investigate mental illness is disappointing because it reifies the Cartesian mind/body split.
It is my hope that this article will add to current literature the bodily experience of mental health problems. It is not my wish to necessarily answer the questions of who experiences mental health problems and why, but, instead, to show the subjective experiences of mental health problems and how those experiences both help people make sense of their lives.