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Remembering the earthquake: intrusive memories of disaster in a rural Italian community

BACKGROUND: Disasters can have long-lasting impacts on mental health. Intrusive memories have been found to be common and persistent in the aftermath of earthquakes. OBJECTIVE: To explore, using diaries, intrusive memories’ presence, content, characteristics, and relationship with probable post-trau...

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Autores principales: Massazza, Alessandro, Joffe, Helene, Parrott, Elinor, Brewin, Chris R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Taylor & Francis 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9103703/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35572391
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2022.2068909
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author Massazza, Alessandro
Joffe, Helene
Parrott, Elinor
Brewin, Chris R.
author_facet Massazza, Alessandro
Joffe, Helene
Parrott, Elinor
Brewin, Chris R.
author_sort Massazza, Alessandro
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Disasters can have long-lasting impacts on mental health. Intrusive memories have been found to be common and persistent in the aftermath of earthquakes. OBJECTIVE: To explore, using diaries, intrusive memories’ presence, content, characteristics, and relationship with probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a small rural community exposed to mass destruction and loss of life. METHODS: Survivors of the 2016–2017 Central Italy earthquakes (N = 104) were first interviewed to investigate the presence of intrusive memories of the disaster. Those that reported intrusive memories were subsequently asked to complete a 7-day paper-and-pen diary tracking their spontaneous memories of the earthquake events. RESULTS: Twenty months after the earthquakes, 49% (n = 51) of the sample reported having experienced intrusive memories post-earthquake and 38% (n = 39) reported at least one intrusive memory in their diaries. Memories were rated as being distressing, vivid, and experienced as a mixture of images and thoughts. The content of intrusive memories generally focused on sensations and experiences during the earthquake. Other common categories of content were the material environment and physical objects as well as human loss & death. Several memories had a social focus. A minority of memories contained more positive content as well as content from before and after the earthquake. Some participants (28%) experienced repeated intrusive memories of the same content. Memories of participants with and without probable PTSD did not significantly differ on characteristics or content. CONCLUSIONS: Intrusive memories can be common, distressing, and persistent occurrences following disasters, even in survivors not suffering from probable PTSD. HIGHLIGHTS: Intrusive memories were common, distressing, and vivid more than 1-year post-disaster. They captured peri-earthquake sensations, material destruction, death, and social interactions. No difference in content or characteristics was found between participants with and without probable PTSD.
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spelling pubmed-91037032022-05-14 Remembering the earthquake: intrusive memories of disaster in a rural Italian community Massazza, Alessandro Joffe, Helene Parrott, Elinor Brewin, Chris R. Eur J Psychotraumatol Basic Research Article BACKGROUND: Disasters can have long-lasting impacts on mental health. Intrusive memories have been found to be common and persistent in the aftermath of earthquakes. OBJECTIVE: To explore, using diaries, intrusive memories’ presence, content, characteristics, and relationship with probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a small rural community exposed to mass destruction and loss of life. METHODS: Survivors of the 2016–2017 Central Italy earthquakes (N = 104) were first interviewed to investigate the presence of intrusive memories of the disaster. Those that reported intrusive memories were subsequently asked to complete a 7-day paper-and-pen diary tracking their spontaneous memories of the earthquake events. RESULTS: Twenty months after the earthquakes, 49% (n = 51) of the sample reported having experienced intrusive memories post-earthquake and 38% (n = 39) reported at least one intrusive memory in their diaries. Memories were rated as being distressing, vivid, and experienced as a mixture of images and thoughts. The content of intrusive memories generally focused on sensations and experiences during the earthquake. Other common categories of content were the material environment and physical objects as well as human loss & death. Several memories had a social focus. A minority of memories contained more positive content as well as content from before and after the earthquake. Some participants (28%) experienced repeated intrusive memories of the same content. Memories of participants with and without probable PTSD did not significantly differ on characteristics or content. CONCLUSIONS: Intrusive memories can be common, distressing, and persistent occurrences following disasters, even in survivors not suffering from probable PTSD. HIGHLIGHTS: Intrusive memories were common, distressing, and vivid more than 1-year post-disaster. They captured peri-earthquake sensations, material destruction, death, and social interactions. No difference in content or characteristics was found between participants with and without probable PTSD. Taylor & Francis 2022-05-11 /pmc/articles/PMC9103703/ /pubmed/35572391 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2022.2068909 Text en © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Basic Research Article
Massazza, Alessandro
Joffe, Helene
Parrott, Elinor
Brewin, Chris R.
Remembering the earthquake: intrusive memories of disaster in a rural Italian community
title Remembering the earthquake: intrusive memories of disaster in a rural Italian community
title_full Remembering the earthquake: intrusive memories of disaster in a rural Italian community
title_fullStr Remembering the earthquake: intrusive memories of disaster in a rural Italian community
title_full_unstemmed Remembering the earthquake: intrusive memories of disaster in a rural Italian community
title_short Remembering the earthquake: intrusive memories of disaster in a rural Italian community
title_sort remembering the earthquake: intrusive memories of disaster in a rural italian community
topic Basic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9103703/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35572391
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2022.2068909
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