The article focuses on the long-term health of a rural male population exposed to a major earthquake event in Chile, in 2010. The results show that a majority of the male study participants considered that their physical and mental health had deteriorated over a 7-year span following the earthquake and that these impacts were strongest in men aged 65 years or more. In considering potential lessons for intervention, the results must be interpreted within the context of the construction of male identities in a rural community, informed by generally conservative values and binary male-female gender roles. The article concludes that health and social services workers and administrators providing interventions to male populations following earthquake must work to reduce the gap between the service offer and men’s real needs, which are frequently insufficiently understood and inadequately coded.
Part of the book: Earthquakes