This chapter seeks to understand the psychological facilitators of active community engagement with the public health response to successful responses to disease outbreaks. It summarises research on the key psychological predictors of engagement in protective behaviours in the COVID-19 pandemic, it describes how mutual aid groups have helped people to shield and self-isolate during the pandemic, and it summarises research on the factors that have sustained these groups over time. It draws out the general principles and the policy and practice implications that emerge from the research on this topic. The focus is largely on evidence from the UK, although many of the points covered in this chapter apply equally to the situation in other countries.

This chapter summarises how understandings of the role of the public in emergencies have changed over time. It proceeds to outline a conceptual framework, the social identity approach, that has proved fruitful for understanding how the public responds during these events. The focus here is on behaviour. However, social identity processes also have implications for mental health. The chapter explains these connections and points to the other chapters that elaborate on these arguments, with empirical examples.

This chapter introduces the notion of identifying primary and secondary stressors as a way of drawing attention to the many sources of stress that arise either as a consequence of disastrous events of long or short duration, or because they frame the context in which those disastrous events occur. The events that we include in this approach are broad in nature; they include emergencies of all kinds, major incidents, outbreaks of high consequence infectious diseases (HCIDs), terrorist attacks, and conflicts. We begin by outlining the context in which the circumstances that cause stress operate. Then we define primary and secondary stressors. This approach helps us to understand sources of stress in all kinds of adverse and disastrous events. We conclude that the sources of stress that we have researched in these differing emergencies differ, but also have much in common.

The editors create an agenda of themes for developing services and practitioners, and for research capable of responding to psychosocial aspects of emergencies, incidents, disasters, and disease outbreaks (EIDD) and their deleterious effects. Topics include the perspectives of scientists, practitioners, and the public, the historical importance of how current capabilities have developed, the critical theme of agreeing definitions, recognising the wellbeing, psychosocial, and mental health agendas that face survivors of EIDD in their recovery, the fallacies of basing planning on panic and the belief that survivors of subsequent EIDD fare better than first timers, and the importance of good communication within and between agencies and then with the public, and of teams and their leadership. It recognises the lessons from the social sciences, and the importance of social support, psychological safety, and our relationships in our recovery. This book strongly supports the notion that there is no health without mental health.