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Impact of Japanese Post-Disaster Temporary Housing Areas’ (THAs) Design on Mental and Social Health

The phenomenon named kodokushi, meaning death alone without the care or company of anyone inside temporary housing, appeared after the Kobe earthquake in Japan in 1995 with some 250 cases. This paper analyzes the evolution of Japanese temporary houses—to attempt to prevent the problem of kodokushi—f...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Bris, Pablo, Bendito, Félix
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6926651/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31783676
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16234757
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author Bris, Pablo
Bendito, Félix
author_facet Bris, Pablo
Bendito, Félix
author_sort Bris, Pablo
collection PubMed
description The phenomenon named kodokushi, meaning death alone without the care or company of anyone inside temporary housing, appeared after the Kobe earthquake in Japan in 1995 with some 250 cases. This paper analyzes the evolution of Japanese temporary houses—to attempt to prevent the problem of kodokushi—from the point of view of management, how services and activities are organized, and design. We will use case studies as our methodological tool, analyzing the responses in 1995 Kobe (50,000 THs), 2004 Chūetsu (3000 THs), 2011 Tōhoku (50,000 THs), and 2016 Kumamoto (4000 THs). This article shows how the Japanese THAs follow a single design that has undergone very little variation in the last 25 years, a design which promotes the social isolation of their residents, making recovery—from the psychological perspective—and helping the most vulnerable members of society, more difficult. In small scale disasters (Chūetsu) applying organization and management measures was able to correct the problems caused by design and there were no cases of kodokushi: in large-scale disasters (Tōhoku), however, the difficulties to implement the same measures resulted in the reappearance of new cases at rates similar to Kobe’s. Our main conclusion is that the design of Japanese THAs must be reconsidered and changed to respond to the real needs of the most vulnerable groups.
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spelling pubmed-69266512019-12-24 Impact of Japanese Post-Disaster Temporary Housing Areas’ (THAs) Design on Mental and Social Health Bris, Pablo Bendito, Félix Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The phenomenon named kodokushi, meaning death alone without the care or company of anyone inside temporary housing, appeared after the Kobe earthquake in Japan in 1995 with some 250 cases. This paper analyzes the evolution of Japanese temporary houses—to attempt to prevent the problem of kodokushi—from the point of view of management, how services and activities are organized, and design. We will use case studies as our methodological tool, analyzing the responses in 1995 Kobe (50,000 THs), 2004 Chūetsu (3000 THs), 2011 Tōhoku (50,000 THs), and 2016 Kumamoto (4000 THs). This article shows how the Japanese THAs follow a single design that has undergone very little variation in the last 25 years, a design which promotes the social isolation of their residents, making recovery—from the psychological perspective—and helping the most vulnerable members of society, more difficult. In small scale disasters (Chūetsu) applying organization and management measures was able to correct the problems caused by design and there were no cases of kodokushi: in large-scale disasters (Tōhoku), however, the difficulties to implement the same measures resulted in the reappearance of new cases at rates similar to Kobe’s. Our main conclusion is that the design of Japanese THAs must be reconsidered and changed to respond to the real needs of the most vulnerable groups. MDPI 2019-11-27 2019-12 /pmc/articles/PMC6926651/ /pubmed/31783676 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16234757 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Bris, Pablo
Bendito, Félix
Impact of Japanese Post-Disaster Temporary Housing Areas’ (THAs) Design on Mental and Social Health
title Impact of Japanese Post-Disaster Temporary Housing Areas’ (THAs) Design on Mental and Social Health
title_full Impact of Japanese Post-Disaster Temporary Housing Areas’ (THAs) Design on Mental and Social Health
title_fullStr Impact of Japanese Post-Disaster Temporary Housing Areas’ (THAs) Design on Mental and Social Health
title_full_unstemmed Impact of Japanese Post-Disaster Temporary Housing Areas’ (THAs) Design on Mental and Social Health
title_short Impact of Japanese Post-Disaster Temporary Housing Areas’ (THAs) Design on Mental and Social Health
title_sort impact of japanese post-disaster temporary housing areas’ (thas) design on mental and social health
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6926651/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31783676
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16234757
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