Analyzing the Community Resiliency

Community Resiliency

Community resilience can be defined as a tool for measuring a community's sustained ability to exploit the resources available in responding to, enduring, and recovering from disasters (Community Resilience). Communities that are resilient reduce the destruction level brought about by a disaster, in their day-to-day operations and local economies. They are usually ready to reduce or prevent the destruction or loss of their environment, lives and property, and are able to resume their people to work as soon as possible, and help them quickly reopen their businesses along with other services important for achieving an immediate and full recovery in the economy (Resilient Communities are the Foundations of a Resilient America).

Resilience is a dynamic and natural aspect of any community. In other words, resilience is a lifetime aspect of the society. It can potentially be measured absolutely, or it is at least possible to detect changes in the resilience of a community.

The major factor of resilience is adaptability. It may occur in two situations; either when expecting a crisis or when responding to it.

The definition of resilience is supposed to allow for making of important predictions regarding the ability of a community to recover in case of a disaster. This way, communities can rate their resilience level and make strategies for enhancing it if need be (CARRI, 2013).

Reliance on media information has its own problems, and probably inconsistencies, in risk communication, and in ensuring the security of members of the community. Media, with the help of activist and advocacy groups, frequently make known to the public and policymakers, the security problems, environmental hazards and infrastructure flaws (Norris & Stevans, 2007).

Helping Mental Health Growth

National health safety greatly relies on a community's ability to recover from adversity or enhancement of community resilience. Recent regional conferences with stakeholders meant for developing the Strategy for National Health Safety showed that there are unanswered questions on how a community can develop resilience or measure it in case it faces natural or artificial threats. There are numerous theoretical models, to date, which point out the aspects leading to community resilience. They include the capability of a community to quickly assemble resources, and cohesion within the community. However, there is little empirical evidence of the factors that make up the fundamental contents of resiliency.

In spite of the little evidence available, improved community resilience is still seen as important in mitigation of vulnerabilities, decreasing adverse health consequences, as well as quickly restoring the operations of the community. Homeland Security Presidential Directive-21, states that resilience is important in restricting the necessity for prolonged help after a disaster (CHANDRA, et al., 2010). Social support mostly captures the assisting attributes among families and friends, while social capital also includes interactions among individuals and with their communities and larger neighbourhoods. The significance of outreach and psycho-education, acknowledgement of the importance of involving people that are not mental health or medical professionals during interventions, are also important in planning services for mental health (Norris & Stevans, 2007).

Hindering Mental Health Growth

One aspect that may be a hindrance to developing community resilience studies is the intricacy of disaster. Upcoming theoretical development should define clearly the disasters that take place externally. Disaster, from the perspective of life-span development, may be social, economic psychological or biological. The main fear is its potential unsuitability for application of the resilience concept in case a stressor neither causes adverse impacts nor requires adaptation. Disasters do not all have equal amounts of destruction. For this reason, it is important that research methodologies consider cautiously, identifying a disaster with its duration and seriousness when coming up with instruments for measuring (Lee, Cheung, & Kwong, 2012).