Kobe City College of Nursing, 3-4 Gakuen-nishi-machi, Nishi-ku, Kobe City, Japan.
Int J Behav Med. 2012 Sep;19(3):243-51. doi: 10.1007/s12529-011-9184-3.
The psychological reactions to catastrophic events are not known well in children.
The present study was performed to quantify the core features of post-traumatic stress reactions in schoolchildren after the Kobe earthquake.
Children's psychological reactions to the Kobe earthquake were examined in a total of 8,800 schoolchildren attending the third, fifth, or eighth grade in the disaster areas. The control subjects were 1,886 schoolchildren in the same grades in distant areas minimally affected by the earthquake. A self-report questionnaire was developed with reference to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV and the post-traumatic stress disorder reaction index and was used to score psychological reactions rating them from 1 to 4 depending on the frequency of the symptom. The survey was conducted four times, from 4 months to 2 years after the earthquake.
Three factors were consistently extracted by factor analysis on the results of each study. Factor 1 was interpreted as relating to direct fear of the disaster and general anxiety, factor 2 as relating to depression and physical symptoms, and factor 3 as social responsibility such as feelings of sympathy for those who are suffering more severely and guilt for surviving. Young schoolchildren displayed particularly high scores on these factors. Furthermore, these factors were significantly associated with injuries of the children themselves, fatalities/injuries of family members, and the experience of being rescued or staying in shelters.
Psychological and comprehensive interventions should be directed at the most vulnerable populations of young children after future earthquakes.
目前人们对儿童在灾难性事件后的心理反应知之甚少。
本研究旨在定量评估神户地震后学龄儿童创伤后应激反应的核心特征。
在受灾地区，共对 8800 名三、五、八年级的学龄儿童进行了儿童对神户地震心理反应的调查。对照组为受地震影响较小的远距离地区的 1886 名同年级学龄儿童。参考《精神障碍诊断与统计手册第四版》和创伤后应激障碍反应指数制定了一份自我报告问卷，根据症状出现的频率，将心理反应评分从 1 到 4。调查共进行了 4 次，分别在地震后 4 个月至 2 年内进行。
对每次研究的结果进行因子分析，均提取出 3 个因子。因子 1 被解释为与对灾难的直接恐惧和一般焦虑有关，因子 2 与抑郁和身体症状有关，因子 3 与社会责任有关，如对遭受更严重痛苦的人的同情和对幸存的内疚感。年幼的学龄儿童在这些因子上的得分特别高。此外，这些因子与儿童自身的受伤、家庭成员的死亡/受伤以及被救援或留在避难所的经历显著相关。
在未来的地震后，应针对最脆弱的儿童群体进行心理和综合干预。
