Digital Mental Health Resilience During Natural Disasters: A Scoping Review and Research Agenda

Authors: M. A. Islam, J. Marx, L. Liu and O. Turel

Abstract— Social media have become integral to natural disaster response, providing critical spaces for communication, coordination, and emotional support for affected communities. While prior research has examined the utility of social media during natural disasters, the focus has often been on information dissemination, crisis communication, and event detection, with limited attention to how these platforms contribute to psychological adaptation and recovery. This paper addresses this important gap by investigating the role of social media in fostering digital mental health resilience—the capacity of individuals and communities to sustain, adapt, and restore psychological well-being through engagement with digital platforms. Using a scoping review methodology, we analyse a sample of 33 articles, identifying seven socio-technical themes that synthesise how social media support digital mental health resilience across natural disaster phases. This adds a mental health dimension to digital resilience literature and informs practitioners seeking to sustainably improve of community resilience in this regard.

Keywords— Social media, natural disasters, digital mental health resilience, community resilience.

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