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Determinants of psychological morbidity in survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and Nias

BACKGROUND: The goal of this study was to collect information to inform the design of a mental health response following the massive December 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia. As well as exploring the effect on mental health of direct exposure to the tsunami the study...

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Autores principales: Irmansyah, I, Dharmono, Suryo, Maramis, Albert, Minas, Harry
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20423505
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1752-4458-4-8
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author Irmansyah, I
Dharmono, Suryo
Maramis, Albert
Minas, Harry
author_facet Irmansyah, I
Dharmono, Suryo
Maramis, Albert
Minas, Harry
author_sort Irmansyah, I
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The goal of this study was to collect information to inform the design of a mental health response following the massive December 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia. As well as exploring the effect on mental health of direct exposure to the tsunami the study was designed to examine the effect on mental health of immediate post-disaster changes in life circumstances (impact). METHODS: Information was collected from a sample of 783 people aged 15 years and over in earthquake and tsunami-affected areas of Aceh and Nias, 616 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and 167 non-IDPs. The structured questionnaire that was designed for data collection consisted of demographic information, measures of disaster exposure and of changes in life circumstances (impact), the extended version of the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ), and a brief measure of resilience. Group comparisons, contrasting responses of IDPs and non-IDPs, were by chi-square for frequency data and t-tests for ordinal or continuous data. Hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses were performed to examine the relative contributions to psychopathology of demographic variables and measures of exposure, impact and resilience. RESULTS: High rates of psychopathology, including symptoms of anxiety and affective disorders and post-traumatic stress syndrome, were recorded in the overall sample, particularly in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who experienced more substantial post-disaster changes in life circumstances (impact). The IDP group experienced significantly more SRQ symptoms than did the non-IDP group. Demographic factors alone accounted for less two percent of variance in SRQ-scores. Higher SRQ-20 scores were observed among women, those with lower education, those with diminished resilience beliefs, those experiencing high scores on disaster impact, those experiencing direct exposures to the disaster, and due to (unmeasured) conditions related to being an IDP. The greatest effect among these was due to disaster impacts. The pattern was similar when considering post-traumatic stress symptoms separately. CONCLUSIONS: Negative changes in a person's life circumstances following a disaster appear to have as important an effect on psychopathology as the direct experience of the disaster. Ameliorating the extent and duration of post-disaster negative changes in life circumstances may play an important role in prevention of post-disaster psychological morbidity.
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spelling pubmed-28735712010-05-20 Determinants of psychological morbidity in survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and Nias Irmansyah, I Dharmono, Suryo Maramis, Albert Minas, Harry Int J Ment Health Syst Research BACKGROUND: The goal of this study was to collect information to inform the design of a mental health response following the massive December 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia. As well as exploring the effect on mental health of direct exposure to the tsunami the study was designed to examine the effect on mental health of immediate post-disaster changes in life circumstances (impact). METHODS: Information was collected from a sample of 783 people aged 15 years and over in earthquake and tsunami-affected areas of Aceh and Nias, 616 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and 167 non-IDPs. The structured questionnaire that was designed for data collection consisted of demographic information, measures of disaster exposure and of changes in life circumstances (impact), the extended version of the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ), and a brief measure of resilience. Group comparisons, contrasting responses of IDPs and non-IDPs, were by chi-square for frequency data and t-tests for ordinal or continuous data. Hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses were performed to examine the relative contributions to psychopathology of demographic variables and measures of exposure, impact and resilience. RESULTS: High rates of psychopathology, including symptoms of anxiety and affective disorders and post-traumatic stress syndrome, were recorded in the overall sample, particularly in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who experienced more substantial post-disaster changes in life circumstances (impact). The IDP group experienced significantly more SRQ symptoms than did the non-IDP group. Demographic factors alone accounted for less two percent of variance in SRQ-scores. Higher SRQ-20 scores were observed among women, those with lower education, those with diminished resilience beliefs, those experiencing high scores on disaster impact, those experiencing direct exposures to the disaster, and due to (unmeasured) conditions related to being an IDP. The greatest effect among these was due to disaster impacts. The pattern was similar when considering post-traumatic stress symptoms separately. CONCLUSIONS: Negative changes in a person's life circumstances following a disaster appear to have as important an effect on psychopathology as the direct experience of the disaster. Ameliorating the extent and duration of post-disaster negative changes in life circumstances may play an important role in prevention of post-disaster psychological morbidity. BioMed Central 2010-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC2873571/ /pubmed/20423505 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1752-4458-4-8 Text en Copyright ©2010 Irmansyah et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Irmansyah, I
Dharmono, Suryo
Maramis, Albert
Minas, Harry
Determinants of psychological morbidity in survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and Nias
title Determinants of psychological morbidity in survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and Nias
title_full Determinants of psychological morbidity in survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and Nias
title_fullStr Determinants of psychological morbidity in survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and Nias
title_full_unstemmed Determinants of psychological morbidity in survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and Nias
title_short Determinants of psychological morbidity in survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and Nias
title_sort determinants of psychological morbidity in survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in aceh and nias
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20423505
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1752-4458-4-8
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