Multi-scalar and Multi-dimensional Conceptions of Social Capital and Mental Health Impacts After Disaster: The case of Hurricane Harvey.

While much research investigates how social capital relates to mental health after disasters, less work employs a multi-scalar, multi-dimensional framework on social capital. We apply such a framework of social capital to an analysis of novel survey data of approximately 1,000 urban and rural Texans after Hurricane Harvey. On the individual level, we find that greater social support is linked to less mental health impacts, but that greater civic and organizational engagement is linked to greater mental health impacts. At the community level, we find that neither a density of bridging social capital organizations nor of bonding social capital organizations is associated with poorer mental health, although we find that greater bonding organizations are linked to negative mental health impacts for rural residents. We conclude by focusing on how individual and community social capital relationships with mental health are contingent on measurement, scale, and rural or urban location. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.