Environmental Health Perspectives 105, Supplement 6, December 1997

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Psychosocial Assistance after Environmental Accidents: A Policy Perspective

Steven M. Becker

The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, and Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel

Abstract
There is a substantial body of literature on the psychosocial impacts of chemical and nuclear accidents. Less attention, however, has been focused on the program and policy issues that are connected with efforts to provide psychosocial assistance to the victims of such accidents. Because psychosocial assistance efforts are certain to be an essential part of the response to future environmental emergencies, it is vital that relevant program and policy issues be more fully considered. This article discusses the highly complex nature of contamination situations and highlights some of the key policy issues that are associated with the provision of psychosocial services after environmental accidents. One issue concerns the potential for assistance efforts to become objects of conflict. In the context of the intense controversy typically associated with chemical or nuclear accidents, and with debates over the causation of illness usually at the center of environmental accidents, psychosocial assistance services may themselves become contested terrain. Other significant program and policy issues include determining how to interface with citizen self-help and other voluntary groups, addressing the problem of stigma, and deciding how to facilitate stakeholder participation in the shaping of service provision. This article offers a series of policy proposals that may help smooth the way for psychosocial assistance programs in future environmental emergencies. -- Environ Health Perspect 105(Suppl 6):1557-1563 (1997)

Key words: environmental accidents, psychosocial assistance, technological disasters, disaster services, public policy

This paper is based on a presentation at the International Conference on Radiation and Health held 3-7 November 1996 in Beer Sheva, Israel. Abstracts of these papers were previously published in Public Health Reviews 24(3-4):205-431 (1996). Manuscript received at EHP 18 April 1997; accepted 8 August 1997.

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Kreitman Fellows Program and the Spitzer Department of Social Work at Ben-Gurion University, the Soroka Medical Center, the Steinberg Family Foundation, the Jack and Pauline Freeman Foundation, and the Jesselson Foundation, which helped to support the preparation of this paper. Thanks also to C.E. Needleman, M.M. Davidson, and the anonymous reviewers at EHP, who provided helpful comments on earlier drafts of the article.

Address correspondence to Dr. S.M. Becker, Department of Government and Public Service, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, 339 Ullman Building, 1212 University Boulevard, Birmingham, AL 35294-3350. Telephone: (205) 934-9680. Fax: (205) 934-9896. E-mail: smbecker@sbs.sbs.uab.edu

Abbreviation used: PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls.

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