Traumatologist Paul Valent believes that knowledge of human responses in disasters can help individuals and societies to better control catastrophic events, such as the present pandemic.

This concise book will help the general reader to understand the very wide mental health effects of this pandemic, and thus to understand how distress may be better managed today and in the future.

The author summarises disaster responses as they have manifested in this pandemic. These responses are biological, psychological and social, and they affect individuals, families, children and vulnerable groups.

He also provides a framework which helps to the reader to understand, and thus be better informed to treat, the wide-ranging consequences of the pandemic.