Psychosocial Competency

Stress in life is unavoidable and varies during every phase of life. Everyday living imposes multiple stressors and disasters increase the magnitude of distress experienced by individuals, families and communities. It is essential to capacitate individuals, families and communities with psychosocial competencies that help individuals to cope effectively with the daily stressors. Psychosocial competency empowers individuals, families and communities and enable prompt and rational reactions in response to disasters. The skills that disaster prone communities need to develop during the life course to enhance the psychosocial competencies are mentioned below:

Skills required to enhance psychosocial competency

• Emotional Skills : Self-awareness; Empathy; Adaptability; Coping; Resilience.
• Cognitive Skills :  Problem solving; Decision making; Critical thinking; Creative thinking.
• Social & Civic Skills : Interpersonal Relationship Skills; Effective communication; Cross cultural sensitivity; Social responsibility.
• Leadership Skills : Planning; Organising; Collaborating; Influencing; Conflict resolution.
• Information Skills : Information literacy; Media literacy; Information Communication literacy

Emotional Skills

• Self-awareness: Self-awareness refers to absolute awareness a person has about oneself/others and why a person behaves in a certain way. It involves awareness about one's strengths and limitations, coping strategies and internal resources.
  
  • “Flood takes place commonly during rainy season in my locality. So, during the rainy season, I take my family to my sister's house. We stay there until the flood situation gets better.” (32 years old male)
• Empathy: Empathy is putting oneself into another person's position. When one person understands another person's situation and tries to think from the other person's perspective, it enriches understanding between the individuals. During disaster when individuals understand persons, especially vulnerable and marginalised groups, the relief centric activities can be promptly made available to the needy.
  
  • “Me and my family need support. However, my neighbour has two children with disability and she lost her husband in the landslide. They need more support. Kindly help them”. (45 years old woman)
• Adaptability: Adaptability is an individual's/family/community capacity to adjust and adapt to the changes caused by an event. Disasters create physical and psychosocial impact. Adaptation skills help the individual/family/community to cope, respond better to the changes and move forward. Here the individual/family/community foresees the event, understands the warning signs and prepares adequately in advance. These adaptation skills fuel faster recovery.
  
  • “I know that COVID is going to continue for another six months or one year. I cannot stop going out. I will follow all the necessary precautions and continue going for work. If I stay at home, who will feed my family”. (39 years old male).
• Coping: Coping with stress and coping with emotions are essential for every individual / family / community. Disaster triggers a wide range of emotions that might induce stress. Individuals / family / community have both adaptive (receiving support, talking out, planning, accepting) and maladaptive coping patterns (consuming alcohol, denial, being withdrawn). Maximizing the use of adaptive patterns and minimising the use of maladaptive patterns would limit the negative consequences of disaster.
  
  • “Whenever I feel stressed, I don't talk about my feelings to others. Talking to you has helped me a lot. I am feeling much better”. (18 years old female).
• Resilience: All the skills aim at building resilience among individuals / family / community. Resilience is a skill that helps individuals resist to the loss incurred subsequent to disaster, recover, and move forward.
  
  • “I lost my house but I know I can rebuild it”. (43 years old male).

Cognitive Skills

• Problem solving: Disaster situations impose lot of challenges to individuals / family / community. Having skills to deal effectively with the challenges would foster better adaptation. Individuals need to first understand the problem, break complex problems into simpler units, brainstorm alternative solutions and execute to deal with the problem/s.
  
  • “Every year our community gets affected by floods. Government comes and provides relief when water overflows. Our community wanted to find some solution to this recurring problem. We had consecutive discussions and decided to build water banks and passages for water to go swiftly. Now the condition is better”.(39 years old female).
• Decision Making: During disasters, people need to make many decisions. Effective decision-making skills help individuals/family/community to assess the severity of the situation and respond better. Individuals need to brainstorm decisions and assess the pros and cons of each decision. After analysing the actions and consequences of each decision, the individual can select one.
  
  • “Whenever early warning signs regarding cyclone are announced, I decide not to go for fishing. My home is near the shore. We also shift to safer zones created by the Government”. (28 years old male).
• Critical Thinking: Thinking critically enables better decision-making and problem- solving abilities. Individuals/family/community need to think rationally, understand the logical connections, analyse the implications and come to a conclusive action.
  
  • “Being a farmer, we need to be dependent on mother nature. I decide what to do based on the climate. Even if I do not have much yield or my crops dry off because of extreme heat, I will think on what can be done to save the crop”. (52 years old male).
• Creative Thinking: Though critical thinking is vital, thinking out of the box is also essential. Using resources differently or using available resources to solve existing  problems is vital to build resilient communities.
  
  • “We have water scarcity during drought seasons and we need to travel long distances to fetch water. It would be heavy to carry the water pots on our heads. One NGO helped us with these circular water carriers which we can roll on the roads and reach our homes without much burden”. (32 years old female).

Social & Civic Skills

• Interpersonal relationship skills: People in general need support from one another. Interpersonal relationship skills help in forming and maintaining relationships and social connections. During emergencies, community need the support of one another. These interpersonal skills help in identifying persons who can be trusted, forming meaningful relationships and sustaining relationships that would add support during difficult times.
  
  • “I maintain cordial relationship with my neighbours. Whenever I have any trouble, they come for my assistance. When my neighbours undergo any difficulty, I offer support”. (42 years old female).
• Effective Communication: Communication is passing of information from a sender to a receiver. During emergencies, providing meaningful communication is crucial as a wrong communication can even result in casualty or major accident. Enabling direct and open verbal/non-verbal communication would facilitate better understanding among individuals and minimise chaos/commotion.
  
  • “Passing clear messages will minimise confusion. I generally tell clearly, what I expect. It would help the other person to understand better”. (33 years old male).
• Cross-cultural sensitivity: The Indian subcontinent has people from diverse communities, class, creed, language and religion. It is essential to understand the sentiments of persons from other cultures, respect them and tolerate. It will foster unity and minimise culture specific tensions.
  
  • “When we lost our homes during the earthquake, we were allowed to stay in temple halls, churches and mosques. We were from different religions. Based on our religious customs, food was offered. They treated us with respect and regard. We also share eatables and sweets during our festivals”. (63 years old female).
• Social Responsibility: People need to be responsible. Government issues early warning signs to ensure people safety. People need to adhere to the instructions. During disasters, community members act as the first responders. Along with securing their personal and familial needs, individuals should also work towards attaining the collective needs of the community. It would help in restoring the community.
  
  • “We gather as a community every three months, to discuss about the issues that affect the community's well-being. We have set up systems to ensure the safety of our people and property”. (52 years old male).

Leadership Skills

• Planning: Proper planning is essential for prompt action. Adequate planning results in accurate implementation. Every individual should possess adequate planning skills. Certain disasters can be anticipated and certain occur without any warning. Planning in advance helps in developing readiness to face disasters with vigour. The plans need not be rigid but need to be flexible based on the circumstances.
  
  • “Whenever there is an evacuation alarm, I keep ready with essential things to carry and safeguard all important documents”.(27 years old female).
• Organising: Individuals need to have a clear idea on what to do and how they are going to do. Once they have clarity, it has to be communicated to others and effective action need to be taken in alliance with others. Proper prioritisation is also essential while implementing. Timely monitoring and evaluation of the work initiated would help in tracking the progress.
  
  • “After the chemical poisoning, we gathered as a group and protested, till the company was shifted from our community. During the protest, we also made sure that the company follows the essential safety procedures”. (43 years old male).
• Collaborating: A single individual cannot do all the work. It is essential to coordinate, collaborate and cooperate. Tasks need to be assigned and delegated based on individuals' or organisations' expertise, skills, resources and interests. During disaster situations, multiple hands coming together is essential to restore the lives of shattered hearts.
  
  • “I cannot do everything by myself. I sought the help of the community volunteers in our village and we started preserving and expanding the mangrove”. (39 years old male).
• Influencing: Positive change need to be replicated and sustained. Individuals need to influence community members positively for community action, collaboration and negotiation.
  
  • “I motivate people to group together and people listen to me”. (26 years old female).
• Resolving: In any group, conflicts arise and it is essential to resolve those conflicts with adequate dialogues, open, direct and non-violent communication. A conflict rich group will be a sick group in which collaboration and implementation would be a difficult task. It is essential to understand reasons that cause conflict and resolve them with appropriate strategies. Individuals should have conflict resolution skills that would help them deal effectively when conflicts arise between groups or individuals during disasters.
  • “Our community was not coming together to discuss about disaster risk
    reduction plans, I started bringing children together and through children, I was
    able to reach the parents”.(39 years old male).

Information Skills

• Information literacy: Authentic and adequate information on disaster risk reduction strategies, coping skills, resources available, preparedness and mitigation measures, response action in the wake of disaster enables risk reduction. Individuals/family/community need to capacitate themselves with knowledge related to what to do, whom to approach, what are the services available, what are the early warning signs, cultural and natural cues in case of emergencies.
  
  • “The early warning signs are really helping us. We are cautioned and we know what we are supposed to do and what we are not supposed to do”. (42 years old female).
• Media literacy: In today's era, the entire world has become a global village. Information passes faster through media. Individuals/family/community need to know how to access information through multiple media options available (traditional and new age media).
  
  • “I feel that the social media is helping us in getting information from the authorities. It is also helping us in gathering relief, seeking help and providing support”.(19 years old male).
• Information Communication literacy: We are able to access ocean of information. Assessing the authentic information and passing it on to the needy is another skill that every individual should possess. During emergencies lot of rumours, unauthorised and fake messages are circulated. With the arrival of social media, information gets forwarded easily and people need to be sensitised on evaluating the authenticity of information before circulating.
  
  • “Before circulating any information to another person, I make sure that the information is authentic”.(43 years old female).

It is essential for caregivers to provide understanding among communities on psychosocial competencies and create opportunities to build psychosocial competencies.

Source : National Disaster Management Authority