Child disaster mental health interventions: therapy components

Area of Science:

• Child Psychology
• Disaster Mental Health
• Intervention Science

Background:

• Children experience significant challenges after disasters.
• Various mental health interventions exist for trauma sequelae.
• Few studies analyze individual intervention components.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and describe common components of child disaster mental health interventions.
• To provide a foundation for advancing intervention development and research.

Main Methods:

• Literature review.
• Identification and description of nine common intervention components.

Main Results:

• Nine distinct components commonly found in child disaster mental health interventions were identified.
• Interventions vary in their constituent elements.

Conclusions:

• Future research should clearly define intervention components.
• Studies should dismantle interventions to assess component effectiveness.
• Further attention needed for population and delivery variables (timing, sequencing).