Societal disruption as a disaster. Exploring suicide, drug addiction and domestic violence in Australia through a disaster risk reduction lens

Abstract

Societal disruption and hazards can result in health threats and impacts that are not usually recorded as events in disaster management databases or associated with emergency or disaster management risk reduction activity. Current disaster recording databases are commonly aligned to disaster definitions oriented towards predefined rapid or slow onset hazards causing disasters. Consequently, disaster risk reduction activity is predominantly tailored to these event types. This paper applied a disaster risk reduction lens to the impacts of drug addiction, domestic violence and suicide in Australia. We found that these events meet national and international classifications of disasters according to thresholds and definitions; and propose that contemporary health emergency and disaster risk management (HEDRM) practice can inform disaster risk reduction and support action to reduce the impact of these events.