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Psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors in Iran: a population-based study

BACKGROUND: An earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck the city of Bam in Iran on the 26th of December 2003 at 5.26 A.M. It was devastating, and left over 40,000 dead and around 30,000 injured. The profound tragedy of thousands killed has caused emotional and psychological trauma for te...

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Autores principales: Montazeri, Ali, Baradaran, Hamid, Omidvari, Sepideh, Azin, Seyed Ali, Ebadi, Mehdi, Garmaroudi, Gholamreza, Harirchi, Amir Mahmood, Shariati, Mohammad
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2005
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC548264/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15644145
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-5-4
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author Montazeri, Ali
Baradaran, Hamid
Omidvari, Sepideh
Azin, Seyed Ali
Ebadi, Mehdi
Garmaroudi, Gholamreza
Harirchi, Amir Mahmood
Shariati, Mohammad
author_facet Montazeri, Ali
Baradaran, Hamid
Omidvari, Sepideh
Azin, Seyed Ali
Ebadi, Mehdi
Garmaroudi, Gholamreza
Harirchi, Amir Mahmood
Shariati, Mohammad
author_sort Montazeri, Ali
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: An earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck the city of Bam in Iran on the 26th of December 2003 at 5.26 A.M. It was devastating, and left over 40,000 dead and around 30,000 injured. The profound tragedy of thousands killed has caused emotional and psychological trauma for tens of thousands of people who have survived. A study was carried out to assess psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors and factors associated with severe mental health in those who survived the tragedy. METHODS: This was a population-based study measuring psychological distress among the survivors of Bam earthquake in Iran. Using a multi-stage stratified sampling method a random sample of individuals aged 15 years and over living in Bam were interviewed. Psychological distress was measured using the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). RESULTS: In all 916 survivors were interviewed. The mean age of the respondents was 32.9 years (SD = 12.4), mostly were males (53%), married (66%) and had secondary school education (50%). Forty-one percent reported they lost 3 to 5 members of their family in the earthquake. In addition the findings showed that 58% of the respondents suffered from severe mental health as measured by the GHQ-12 and this was three times higher than reported psychological distress among the general population. There were significant differences between sub-groups of the study sample with regard to their psychological distress. The results of the logistic regression analysis also indicated that female gender; lower education, unemployment, and loss of family members were associated with severe psychological distress among earthquake victims. CONCLUSION: The study findings indicated that the amount of psychological distress among earthquake survivors was high and there is an urgent need to deliver mental health care to disaster victims in local medical settings and to reduce negative health impacts of the earthquake adequate psychological counseling is needed for those who survived the tragedy.
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spelling pubmed-5482642005-02-06 Psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors in Iran: a population-based study Montazeri, Ali Baradaran, Hamid Omidvari, Sepideh Azin, Seyed Ali Ebadi, Mehdi Garmaroudi, Gholamreza Harirchi, Amir Mahmood Shariati, Mohammad BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: An earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck the city of Bam in Iran on the 26th of December 2003 at 5.26 A.M. It was devastating, and left over 40,000 dead and around 30,000 injured. The profound tragedy of thousands killed has caused emotional and psychological trauma for tens of thousands of people who have survived. A study was carried out to assess psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors and factors associated with severe mental health in those who survived the tragedy. METHODS: This was a population-based study measuring psychological distress among the survivors of Bam earthquake in Iran. Using a multi-stage stratified sampling method a random sample of individuals aged 15 years and over living in Bam were interviewed. Psychological distress was measured using the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). RESULTS: In all 916 survivors were interviewed. The mean age of the respondents was 32.9 years (SD = 12.4), mostly were males (53%), married (66%) and had secondary school education (50%). Forty-one percent reported they lost 3 to 5 members of their family in the earthquake. In addition the findings showed that 58% of the respondents suffered from severe mental health as measured by the GHQ-12 and this was three times higher than reported psychological distress among the general population. There were significant differences between sub-groups of the study sample with regard to their psychological distress. The results of the logistic regression analysis also indicated that female gender; lower education, unemployment, and loss of family members were associated with severe psychological distress among earthquake victims. CONCLUSION: The study findings indicated that the amount of psychological distress among earthquake survivors was high and there is an urgent need to deliver mental health care to disaster victims in local medical settings and to reduce negative health impacts of the earthquake adequate psychological counseling is needed for those who survived the tragedy. BioMed Central 2005-01-11 /pmc/articles/PMC548264/ /pubmed/15644145 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-5-4 Text en Copyright © 2005 Montazeri 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 Article
Montazeri, Ali
Baradaran, Hamid
Omidvari, Sepideh
Azin, Seyed Ali
Ebadi, Mehdi
Garmaroudi, Gholamreza
Harirchi, Amir Mahmood
Shariati, Mohammad
Psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors in Iran: a population-based study
title Psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors in Iran: a population-based study
title_full Psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors in Iran: a population-based study
title_fullStr Psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors in Iran: a population-based study
title_full_unstemmed Psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors in Iran: a population-based study
title_short Psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors in Iran: a population-based study
title_sort psychological distress among bam earthquake survivors in iran: a population-based study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC548264/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15644145
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-5-4
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