Mental Health for Future Human Settlements
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As humanity looks for new places to live, disaster mental health support must evolve.
Underground, underwater, floating, airborne, Antarctic, and off-Earth settlements each have specific needs.
The knowledge does not exist to speculate fully on disaster mental health needs as human psychology changes.
Humanity loves to explore and to live in new places. Part of settling afresh is providing mental health and psychosocial support, including for disasters. Many new places are expected to be so different from our current abodes, that new approaches to disaster mental health and psychosocial support will be needed, since current knowledge is inadequate to understand future needs.
On Earth, future communities could be in Antarctica (on or within the ice), underwater, on open water surfaces—anchored or floating cities roaming the oceans—deep underground, or drifting through the air. Speculations and templates exist in science as well as fiction, from humanity living underground in the movie 12 Monkeys to the floating island in the air in the novel Gulliver’s Travels.
While extensive crisis-related mental health work exists for those currently living in Antarctica and for those traveling on ships and in aircraft, all these situations are temporary. When something goes seriously wrong, the preferred response is to get to safety and then address mental health and psychosocial issues. The difference for the future is that those locations will be people's homes to which they would wish to return after a disaster.
It is the same for humanity developing off-Earth settlements: on planets, on moons, among asteroids and comets, and in........
