DISASTERS
Hollywood Movies made on Disasters
Disaster-Based Movies
Titanic (1997)
World Trade Centre (2006)
Response to Disaster Movies
Reasons for Watching Disaster Movies
The Impacts of Natural Disasters on Mental Health
Traumas and Weaknesses
Resilience Factors
Response to Natural Disasters in Reality
Why Disaster Movies?
Dealing with Disaster Effects
Disasters
Disasters are the sudden occurrence of certain events that results in causing a huge amount of damage, loss and destruction to the human life and the nature. The harm or damage caused by the disasters cannot be measured and demands upon the geographical location, the climate or the other environmental factors. Eventually these disasters affect the mental condition, socio-economic, political and cultural condition of the affected area. Generally disasters have the following effect on the influenced areas.
It completely changes the normal life routine.
It affects the emergency system.
The normal needs of life are shortened like food, shelter and health care.
Disaster-Based Movies
Titanic (1997)
This epic movie tells the events of the night when the huge titanic ship moves towards its fateful voyage from the perspective of one of the imaginary survivor Rose. At the age of 100 years, she tells the story of the disaster of the ship titanic that had been searching for a lost diamond.
Titanic was called the ship of dreams and was also known as unsinkable till its departure on April 12th, 1912. During its journey a poor artist Jack Dawson and a rich girl Rose fall in love but there is turned into the struggle to survive in a ship that is about to collapse with the North Atlantic. Rose leaves her fiance for the poor boy artist but jack dies and rose survives when the titanic collides with the iceberg on April 14th 1912 and then sinks on 15th April at around 2am in the morning. 84 years later, rose tells the story of titanic to her granddaughter and friends about how is fell in love with Jack and how they fought for survival on titanic. Rose was rescued by one of the lifeboat along with 700 other people that were saved in the lifeboats.
Rose at the age of 100 years tells her granddaughters the story of titanic from its departure on 12th April 1912 to its end 15th April 1912 on its first and last voyage. (McCoy, 2008)
World Trade Centre (2006)
World Trade Centre is an American drama movie directed by Oliver Stone that is based on the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Centre.
The movie is based on the true story of two of the last survivors John McLoughlin and William J.Jimeno, who were rescued from the ground zero by the brave rescuers who never gave up. It is the story of two heroes at the disastrous time in the history of United States when buildings collapsed and heroes like them came out of the ashes to inspire the whole human race.
The movie portrays the disastrous terrorist attack of 11th September 2001 on the World Trade Centre. After the attack, the building of the World Trade Centre falls over the rescue team from the Port Authority Police Department. Police officer Jimeno and his sergeant John McLoughlin are found trapped alive under the ruins of the building. The movie revolves the efforts of the resue team to save both the men and how these two courageous men survive out of this disaster.(Brent, 2006)
Response to Disaster Movies
The movies based on disasters are no more an attraction to the viewers. These movies have lost their charm and are no longer in the first to watch list of the viewers. It is important for the movie to reflect the time in which the people live to attract the audience otherwise they won't be interested in watching a movie based on a disaster that took place ages ago.
The movies like titanic and World Trade Centre were made at the time of the crisis and were truly liked and appreciated by the audience. These disaster movies provided the truth about the incident and the stories of survival of the victims that really touched the hearts of the audience.
According to some of the recent article Published by BBC, the disasters movies have lost their charm and the hurricanes or fires. In these disasters the people face the risk of losing their life or getting a major physical or mental injury. Some people lose their homes and community that severely affects their mental stability.
The occurrence of the natural disasters is the reason for most of the mental illness in the society. Whenever a natural disaster takes place, a huge number of psychiatric cases are brought to the hospitals. Usually the sudden aftereffect of any disaster is stress or depression experienced by many people and it may become if a person loses his family or friends during the disaster.
Traumas and Weaknesses
The effects of disasters on the mental health of people are surprising. The people who are largely affected by the disaster are those that go through the disaster. Next are those people who witnessed the victims of the disaster and ones who just saw the news of the damage could also suffer from some mental illness but they take less time to recover from the trauma. Research shows that half of the survivors of theses disasters suffer from distress or mental illness. There are a number of factors that leads to worst outcomes.
Death of a close relatively
Severe injuries
Feelings of panic or horror during the disaster
Separation from family members
Loss of home or property
Resilience Factors
Human resilience means that are large number of people will naturally recover from the effects of the disaster. It is the believe that most of the people would move on with their lives without having much damage to their mental health. There are a number of factors that can increase resilience after the disasters:
Help for solving problems
A sense of being understood
Sharing the disaster experiences
Getting ensured that whatever you are going through is not abnormal
Tips for coping with the distress
Social support is one of the best ways of recovering from the effects of the disasters. Having the support and help of others during the time of stress makes its easier for the victims to recover fasters.(Golembiewski, 2013)
Response to Natural Disasters in Reality
Natural disasters occurring in reality could be very traumatic for the children and elders. Experiencing disasters like earthquake, floods and hurricanes can be very frightening even for the adults and the destruction that they cause could have long and severe effect on the people.
Children look up to the adults for teaching them how to manage themselves after the disaster. Schools and teachers play an important role in helping the children getting for their fear by providing them a friendly and peaceful environment. The response teams and different organizations and agencies provide immediate help to the victims by fulfilling their needs. Getting over the after effects of the trauma takes time but immediate response and help increases the speed of recovery of the effected…
