This text is part of the special section Les prix de l’Acfas
Danielle Maltais was a professor of social work at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi in 1996 when the Saguenay flood hit the region. This disaster propelled her towards a research topic that marked her entire career.
As part of her doctorate, the winner of the Acfas Thérèse Gouin-Décarie prize for the social sciences worked in particular on the links between the environment of seniors and their psychological health. She was then able to measure the full importance of living environments for individuals.
“During the floods, I saw houses collapsing and I knew that people would be very affected,” she says. The disaster destroyed nearly 500 homes and forced the displacement of 16,000 people, in addition to causing 10 deaths. Danielle Maltais and her team interviewed around forty victims who had lost their homes. A good portion of them suffered from various psychological and physical ailments, such as anxiety, depression and heart disease.
Danielle Maltais then continues her exploration of the effects of the disaster. For example, she will compare victims and non-victims two years after the Saguenay flood, to once again find significant differences between the two groups in terms of physical and mental health. Even eight years later, new research will show that these difficulties persist for many people.
Quebec is not immune
She also turned her attention to the Saint-Jean-Vianney landslide of May 4, 1971, which killed 31 people and destroyed 42 houses. “Even after 28 years, the fifty or so survivors we met had very vivid memories of these traumatic events, and some suffered from significant psychological sequelae,” points out Danielle Maltais.
Despite his obvious interest, his field of study does not always convince everyone. The researcher says that one of her grant applications had been turned down in 1997 because “big disasters don’t happen in Quebec”. Less than a year later, half of Quebecers find themselves plunged into darkness by the ice storm. Many lack heating in the middle of January.
Suddenly, interest in his field of study increases, as if by magic. Danielle Maltais will take the opportunity to turn her gaze to the effect of the ice storm on the paid and volunteer responders in the Montérégie who took part in the emergency measures. In particular, she notes that many have difficulty readjusting to their daily routine after having experienced such an extraordinary episode.
A few years later, on the night of July 5 to 6, 2013, a train whose cars were filled with light crude oil derailed and caused a gigantic explosion, followed by a major fire, in Lac-Mégantic. One more example that Quebec is not immune to disasters, natural or otherwise. About forty downtown buildings were destroyed and 47 people lost their lives.
In the following years, Danielle Maltais collaborated with Public Health to assess the effects of this sad event on the population, before starting her own research project three years after the events. “After identifying the consequences of disasters and the risk and protective factors for mental health in my previous research, I became interested in resilience in the case of Lac-Mégantic,” she explains.
Marked for a long time
After more than 26 years of observing the impacts of disasters on people’s physical and mental health, Danielle Maltais can draw certain conclusions. In particular, she observes that the victims eventually start to function again, but never forget that they have been affected. The more they were attached to their environment, the more they struggled to adapt to a new living environment. A recent study has also enabled him to identify the elements of stress faced by these individuals, many of which do not stop in the aftermath of a tragedy.
Indeed, in many cases, people do not know when they will be able to return home or, if that is not possible, where they will go to live. In the meantime, they move a lot when they need stability. They do not know if they will get help from governments. Some have also lost their jobs or see their debt increase, etc. All this provokes the development of anxiety and symptoms of post-traumatic stress or depression.
“You don’t heal quickly from such trauma,” concludes the researcher. The effects are felt in the short, medium and long term. »
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