While several studies have demonstrated relationships between
disaster stressors and mental health (Gill et al., 2012; Grattan et al.,
2011; Fan et al., 2015; Rung et al., 2016; Lyons et al., 1999; Palinkas
et al., 1993a; Carrasco et al., 2007; Sabucedo et al., 2010) and inverse
relationships between disaster stressors and social support
(Palinkas et al., 1993b; Norris et al., 2005; Arnberg and Melin, 2013 ),
few studies have explicitly looked at the role of social capital in
these relationships or studied them in the context of an oil spill. A
strength of this study is its ability to distinguish between different
forms of social capital as well as different expressions of exposure
to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the context of a large sample of
women within a geographic setting that is particularly vulnerable
to disasters.
The study does have a number of limitations. First, it uses self-
reported cross-sectional data, precluding our ability to defini-
tively rule out reverse causation. Related to this are the difficulties
in directly attributing depression and available social support to the
oil spill, as some time had passed since the beginning of the spill.
On the one hand, it is possible that depressive symptoms arising
from oil spill exposure were much greater earlier on, as perhaps
were levels of social capital and social support due to insufficient
time for deterioration; this lack of temporal distinction impacts our
ability to accurately assess the magnitude of the different domains
under study and potentially biases our results towards the null.
Longitudinal analyses are an important next step. Second, we are
only able to generalize to women living in southern Louisiana at the
time of the DHOS; results may not apply to men. Finally, social
capital was operationalized at the individual level, resulting in
perceptions of social capital by subjects rather than a true collective
phenomenon that exists at the neighborhood level.
6. Conclusion
Social capital and social support are coping resources that were
found to be beneficial for depression post-disaster. However, they
were themselves negatively impacted by the Deepwater Horizon
oil spill, explaining the overall negative effect of the oil spill on
depression. The findings suggest that social resources are not
immutable and can be harmed by disasters, ultimately influencing
a population's level of depression. Future research should explore
whether these relationships hold over the long term and with other
mental health outcomes. A better understanding of the pathways
between the social context and depression could lead to in-
terventions for improved mental health in the aftermath of a
disaster.
Funding
This research was supported by the National Institute of Envi-
ronmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health (grant
1U01ES021497) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration (grant 3U01ES0214 97-03S1).
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the Women and Their Children's
Health (WaTCH) Study participants and research staff.
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