Mental health and media links based on five essential elements to promote psychosocial support for victims: the case of the earthquake in Chile in 2010 Soledad Puente, Humberto Marín, Pamela P. Álvarez, Pablo M. Flores, and Daniela Grassau 1 This paper reviews the role of news with respect to the mental health of a population exposed to a disaster. It is based on the five essential elements of psychosocial care presented by Stevan E. Hobfoll et al. (2007) that can be introduced after a potentially traumatic event: promoting a sense of safety, calming, self and collective efficacy, connectedness, and hope. This study developed a method to relate these elements to television coverage and applied it to the stories (n = 1,169 ) aired by the main networks in Chile in the 72 hours after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck on 27 February 2010. Of the five elements, promoting a sense of safety occurred most often ( 82.72 per cent), whereas the others were barely present (less than 10 per cent). The study argues that these elements can increase the possibility of framing the news, given that the audience watching can also be affected by a disaster. Keywords: Chile, disaster response, earthquake, journalism, media, mental health, television, tsunami Introduction Catastrophes or disasters result in a great need for all types of information, regardless of whether they are triggered by natural hazards or caused by human action (Lozano, 2006). The media plays an important role in this regard (Scanlon, 2007): journalists supervise the collection, production, and dissemination of information after a disaster using radio, social media, traditional press, and, especially, television. In fact, televi- sion marathons occur in the wake of a disaster (Blondheim and Liebes, 2002), poten- tially affecting not only those directly involved, but also the audience watching. Disasters disrupt communities (Paton et al., 2008); a significant number of people suffer (Eisenman et al., 2007) positively and negatively (Stolzenburg, 2007; Nicholls, Sykes, and Camilleri, 2010). Society as a whole will be deeply moved (Gay, 2015), and the impacts may extend over time (Karanci and Rüstemli, 1995). Affected people include those who have lost loved ones or possessions, first responders, volunteers who provide help on-site (Benedek, Fullerton, and Ursano, 2007), and journalists (Collins, 2000). Even those who should have been where the tragedy occurred, but were not present for circumstantial reasons, could experience the consequences (Taylor, 1987), as too could passive observers (Sabucedo et al., 2010). doi:10.1111/disa.12377 Disasters, 2019, 43(3): 555−574. © 2019 The Author(s). Disasters © Overseas Development Institute, 2019 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA