Prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder after earthquakes among the elderly in China: A meta-analysis

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The study aims to investigate the occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after earthquakes among the elderly. METHODS: Data from cross-sectional studies focusing on the prevalence of PTSD after earthquakes among the elderly were collected from PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure in December 2019. The search terms included post-traumatic stress disorder, earthquake, and elderly. This study used Review Manager 5.0 to evaluate the impact of the results. In addition, forest plots, sensitivity analysis, and bias analysis were carried out on the included articles. The combined estimate of the risk ratio and the standard deviation of the 95% confi dence interval (95% CI) were measurements of the size of the eff ect. RESULTS: There were 4,834 patients included from 10 eligible studies. The sample sizes of PTSD group and non-PTSD group were 1,277 and 3,557, respectively. The meta-analysis showed that the overall occurrence of PTSD after earthquakes among the elderly was 0.25; the occurrence in females was higher than that in males, and the occurrence in the same province indicated little diff erence (Wenchuan city 0.25 and Ya'an city 0.24). CONCLUSIONS: After earthquakes, the occurrence of PTSD is higher among the elderly than among other age groups, and higher among the females than among the males, while there is little difference among different areas within the same province. This indicated that prioritized specific psychological interventions should be provided to the aged and the females.

Impact of climate events, pollution, and green spaces on mental health: an umbrella review of meta-analyses

“…Eight meta-analyses aimed at examining the pooled prevalence of mental disorders after a climate event (Cénat et al, 2020 ; Chen & Liu, 2015 ; Dai et al, 2016 ; Hosseinnejad et al, 2022 ; Jahangiri et al, 2020 ; Liang, Zeng, Liu, Xu, & Liu, 2021 ; Rezayat et al, 2020 ; Sepahvand et al, 2019 ). However, they pooled prevalence rates based on different cut-off values from different self-report measures, which is a crucial methodological error, because these estimates indicate different variables and should not be combined in a meta-analysis (Levis et al, 2019 ).…”

Kahramanmaraş Merkezli Depremler Sonrası İçin Akademik Öneriler

“…PTSS her bireyde oluşmayacağı gibi kişinin önceki psikolojik durumu ve stresörün etkisi gibi birçok faktör ile orantılıdır (Özgen ve Aydın 2016). Deprem sonrası PTSS görülme insidansı ile ilgili bir meta analizde PTSS'nun yaşlılarda gençlere kıyasla, kadınlarda erkeklere kıyasla daha yüksek görüldüğü ifade edilmiştir (Liang et al 2021). Başka bir çalışmada ise depremzedeler içerisinde PTSS durumunun yaşlılarda ve adolesanda orta yaşa göre daha sık olduğu ve çocuklar içinde özellikle kız çocuklarında erkek çocuklara kıyasla daha yüksek görüldüğü ifade edilmiştir (Sun ve ark.…”