Psychological Demand of Catastrophic Risk: A Framework for Mental and Behavioural Resilience Under Systemic Disruption
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B. Stumpf-Biró, S. Frentz, D. F. Whelehan, M. L. Dolezal, P. Servigne, N. Wescombe, B. W. Conroy, B. A. Mukoni, D. C. Denkenberger
Summary
Existing disaster psychology frameworks assume stable institutions and coordinated recovery, making them poorly suited to scenarios like GCIL and ASRS where systemic disruption is prolonged and baseline conditions don't return. This paper builds a novel framework mapping how stressors degrade psychological functioning across four collapse substages, arguing that psychological capacity is a structural prerequisite for societal stability.
Abstract
Conventional models of catastrophe response and risk psychology assume institutional continuity, resource stability, and sustained collective coordination, yet these are assumptions that global catastrophic infrastructure loss (GCIL) and abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios (ASRS) systematically violate, as these events are characterised by compressed response windows, sustained multi-domain disruption, and constraints on return to prior stability. Existing frameworks provide limited insight into how prolonged systemic disruption affects the psychological conditions necessary for societal functioning.
This paper develops a conceptual framework through structured integrative synthesis, combining disaster mental health, risk psychology, collapse and resilience theory, systems thinking, and global risk assessment. Orlov’s collapse domains are extended to develop a novel framework that allows examination of interactions between systemic deterioration and behavioural adaptation across four substages: strain and degradation, fragmentation, collapse, and reorganisation.
The framework identifies recurring stressors, including scarcity, uncertainty, sleep disruption, treatment interruption, institutional erosion, and narrative fragmentation, and maps their effects and interdependence through cognitive, motivational, and social mechanisms. It further identifies moderators of adaptive capacity and demonstrates how psychological degradation can propagate through feedback loops that amplify societal instability disproportionately to the scale of individual impairment.
The analysis demonstrates that psychological functioning is not merely a downstream consequence of catastrophe but a structural determinant of societal capacity under extreme conditions. Protecting psychological capacity is therefore a prerequisite for sustaining cooperation, labour continuity, and social stability during prolonged systemic disruption.