EPICentre’s Alessandro Massazza passes PhD viva focusing on mental health among earthquake survivors

We are delighted to announce that Alessandro Massazza has passed his PhD with minor corrections this week. Alessandro’s PhD focused on mental health among the survivors of the 2016-2017 Central Italy earthquake sequence, with a particular focus on the town of Amatrice. Throughout his PhD he investigated the thoughts, feelings, and behavioural reactions that survivors experienced during the earthquakes and how these impacted their memories of the events. A better understanding of people’s reactions during earthquakes can provide important insights for disaster risk reduction and response, for example in terms of how to plan evacuations.

He is currently working as a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as part of the CHANGE consortium. He will contribute to the development and testing of a brief transdiagnostic intervention to address alcohol misuse and associated mental health problems among populations affected by armed conflict in eastern Ukraine and northern Uganda. He is also working as a consultant in the Department of Mental Health and Substance Use at the World Health Organization where he is involved in the development of a minimum services packages for mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian contexts. 

Alessandro has many fond memories of working and travelling with EPICentre members and looks forward to continuing to contribute to the centre in the future.

Papers from Alessandro’s work in Amatrice:

1.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13753-019-0223-z

2.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6735336/#:~:text=Earthquakes%2C%20psychopathology%20and%20attributions&text=The%20first%20meta%2Danalysis%20on,et%20al.%2C%202016).  

3.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1049732320968791

Contact details
Email: alessandro.massazza@lshtm.ac.uk
Twitter: alemassazza