Date of Conferral

9-22-2025

Degree

Doctor of Human Services (D.H.S.)

School

Human Services

Advisor

Barbara BenOliel

Abstract

Having a post-disaster program in place can offer survivors and emergency responders support, resource navigation, and resiliency planning. Human services workers in the field aid in disaster recovery and crisis prevention. The problem is that rural Nevada is already limited on resources and workforce with respect to mental and behavioral health response and recovery services. The purpose of this study was to identify unknown gaps within mental and behavioral health services in rural and frontier Nevada, in order to focus on advocating to enhance community resilience-related services post-disaster and potentially bolster resilience and disaster response preparedness. The framework for the study is rooted in the Community Resiliency Model (CRM), which emphasizes skills-based trauma recovery and is aligned with the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Risk Index, measuring community resilience. For this qualitative study eleven subject matter experts within the state participated in a force field analysis. Open-ended surveys were accessed to obtain narrative data which was analyzed using content analysis. Findings suggest that rural communities in Nevada would benefit from implementing more community-based disaster behavioral health interventions, particularly those that engage non-clinical individuals in trauma-informed care models and to adopt peer-led frameworks, such as the CRM which have been shown to improve emotional regulation and resilience in disaster-affected populations These findings may contribute to positive social change by informing advocacy efforts for individual and community resilience, the need for disaster behavioral health services and enhanced disaster response preparedness concerning mental and behavioral health services.

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