Humanitarian relief has traditionally concentrated on visibly pressing issues such as the need for clean water and sanitation, emergency feeding and shelter, primary care, management of injuries and death, and the prevention of communicable diseases. Such interventions were the main focus of relief operations after the Tsunami of 26 December 2004. Since the war in the former Yugoslavia, however, there has been increasing interest in the psychosocial dynamics of both natural and man-made disasters, and in the wake of the Tsunami more than three hundred psychosocial projects of various kinds were initiated.
The way in which people will respond to a disaster cannot be predicted with precision: psychosocial outcomes are influenced by personal, social and cultural factors. Not all people will respond in the same way or even suffer from trauma as conceptualized in Western models. It is also important to keep in mind that disasters can affect people who do not experience them at first hand.3