Community recovery after a natural disaster: Core data from a survey of communities affected by the 2010 Mt. Merapi eruptions in Central Java, Indonesia.

The ``Community Recovery after a Natural Disaster: A Survey of Communities Affected by Mt. Merapi Eruptions'' data that are described herein were gathered 16 months after the 2010 Mt. Merapi volcanic eruptions in Central Java, Indonesia. Data collection was organized as a pilot effort to document victim experiences of the disaster; including disaster preparation, mitigation, and recovery. Three-stage clustered random sampling was conducted to create a sample that was representative of varying levels of destruction experienced by victims of the eruptions as well as one that included respondents who were still living in a disaster shelter, who had returned to their previous community, and who had moved on to a new community. By drawing respondents from 10 different villages or shelter communities, a total respondent sample of 400 was collected.

Migration and Mental Health in the Aftermath of Disaster: Evidence from Mt. Merapi, Indonesia.

Migration is a standard survival strategy in the context of disasters. While prior studies have examined factors associated with return migration following disasters, an area that remains relatively underexplored is whether moving home to one's original community results in improved health and well-being compared to other options such as deciding to move on. In the present study, our objective is to explore whether return migration, compared to other migration options, results in superior improvements to mental health. We draw upon data from a cross-sectional pilot study conducted 16 months after a series of volcanic eruptions in Merapi, Indonesia. Using ordinal logistic regression, we find that compared to respondents who were still displaced (reference category), respondents who had "moved home" were proportionally more likely to report good mental health (proportional odds ratios (POR) = 2.02 [95% CI = 1.05, 3.91]) compared to average or poor mental health. Likewise, respondents who had "moved on" were proportionally more likely to report good mental health (POR = 2.64 [95% CI = 0.96, 7.77]. The results suggest that while moving home was an improvement from being displaced, it may have been better to move on, as this yielded superior associations with self-reported mental health.