Psychological distress among evacuees of a volcanic eruption in Japan: A follow‐up study

Abstract

Psychological distress in 248 evacuees from a volcanic eruption was evaluated using a 30-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-30) at four time points after evacuation: 6 months, 12 months, 24 months and 44 months. The proportion of evacuees with psychological distress (defined as a GHQ score ≥ 8) significantly decreased from 66.1% (6 months) to 45.6% (44 months). The GHQ mean score significantly improved from 12.6 to 8.9. Investigation of each factor on the GHQ showed progressive improvement over time in 'anxiety, tension and insomnia' and 'anergia and social dysfunction'. However, 'depression' began to improve only after 44 months and 'interpersonal dysfunction' started to worsen after 12 months. The dysfunction in interpersonal relationships continued at 44 months. Examination of the relation between GHQ mean scores and age group showed that recovery from psychological distress was more difficult in middle-aged and older evacuees than in younger evacuees.

Tsunami-exposed Tourist Survivors

“…Distress was lower than previous findings among earthquake survivors (Ohta et al, 2003). Possibly, the examined sample had higher level of functioning and was less vulnerable than an average population.…”

“…Many long-term follow-up studies focus on survivors residing in the affected areas (Green et al, 1990;Norris et al, 2004;Ohta et al, 2003;van den Berg et al, 2008;Tang, 2007;Tsai et al, 2007). Long-term follow-up of large samples of disaster-exposed nonresident survivors, who were able to return to an intact domestic society, is lacking.…”

Graduate Student Blues

“…The resulting factor structure was interpreted and factors labeled. Labels of the extracted factors were based on recommendations from the original authors (Goldberg & Williams, 1991) in line with existing factor analytic studies of GHQ-30 in Japan (Iwata et al, 1994;Ohta et al, 2003;Ohta et al, 1995;Takeuchi & Kitamura, 1991). The analysis was carried out on the raw data of Likert scores to avoid the loss of information.…”

Effects of the Miyakejima Volcano Eruption on Public Health

“…In Japan, at the disaster area around the volcano of Mt Unzen-Fugen, the proportion of evacuees with psychological distress significantly decreased after 3 years. Investigation showed a progressive improvement over time in anxiety, tension and insomnia [16].…”