Children's Coping in Disasters: Developments, Challenges, and Future Directions

We review the published literature on children's coping in disasters, focusing on disaster type, cultural and socio-demographic influences, and the methods used to assess coping.

Disasters affect children and youth in diverse ways, shaped by both disaster type and broader contextual factors. Research has grown considerably over the past two decades, offering insights into adaptive and maladaptive coping in disaster contexts. However, the field remains constrained by several limitations: a lack of consensus on how coping is conceptualized in children, limited standardized measures specific to disaster contexts, and few culturally adapted tools that capture diverse coping processes across settings. A deeper understanding of children's disaster coping can be achieved by addressing gaps in definitions and tools through clearer conceptualization, culturally grounded measures, and longitudinal, multi-systems approaches. Addressing these gaps will help strengthen supports for children facing the increasing frequency and severity of disasters.