Department of Geography and Planning, P.O. Box 32066, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608, United States of America.
Department of Geography and Planning, P.O. Box 32066, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608, United States of America.
Sci Total Environ. 2023 Jul 1;880:163231. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163231. Epub 2023 Apr 5.
In February 2021, the state of Texas and large parts of the US were affected by a severe cold air outbreak and winter weather event. This event resulted in large-scale power outages and cascading impacts, including limited access to potable water, multiple days without electricity, and large-scale infrastructure damage. Little is known about the mental health implications of these events, as most research has predominantly focused on the mental health effects of exposure to hurricanes, wildfires, or other natural disasters that are more commonly found in the summer months. This study aimed to analyze the crisis responses from the 2021 winter weather event in Texas using Crisis Text Line, a text-based messaging service that provides confidential crisis counseling nationwide. To date, Crisis Text Line is the largest national crisis text service, with over 8 million crisis conversations since its inception in 2013. We employed multiple analytic techniques, including segmented regression, interrupted time series, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), and difference-in-difference (DID), to investigate distinct time periods of exposure for all crisis conversations. ARIMA and DID were further utilized to examine specific crisis outcomes, including depression, stress/anxiety, and thoughts of suicide. Results found increases in total crisis conversations and for thoughts of suicide after the initial winter weather event; however, crisis outcomes varied in time. Thoughts of suicide in high-impact regions were higher across multiple time periods (e.g., 4-weeks, 3-months, 6-months, 9-months and 11-months) compared to low-impact regions and were elevated compared to pre-event time periods for 6-months and 11-months from the initial event. Total crisis volume also remained elevated for high-impact regions compared to low-impact regions up to 11-months after the beginning of the winter event. Our work highlights that cascading winter weather events, like the Texas 2021 Winter storm, negatively impacted mental health. Future research is needed across different disaster types (e.g., cascading, concurrent events) and for specific crisis outcomes (e.g., depression, suicidal ideation) to understand the optimal timing of crisis intervention post-disaster.
2021 年 2 月，德克萨斯州和美国大部分地区受到严重冷空气爆发和冬季天气事件的影响。此次事件导致大规模停电和连锁反应，包括饮用水供应有限、连续多日停电以及大规模基础设施损坏。由于大多数研究主要集中在夏季更常见的飓风、野火或其他自然灾害对心理健康的影响上，因此对于这些事件对心理健康的影响知之甚少。本研究旨在通过 Crisis Text Line 分析 2021 年德克萨斯州冬季天气事件的危机应对措施，Crisis Text Line 是一项基于文本的消息服务，在美国全国范围内提供保密的危机咨询服务。迄今为止，Crisis Text Line 是最大的全国性危机短信服务，自 2013 年成立以来已有超过 800 万次危机对话。我们采用了多种分析技术，包括分段回归、中断时间序列、自回归综合移动平均 (ARIMA) 和差分 (DID)，以调查所有危机对话的不同暴露时间段。ARIMA 和 DID 进一步用于检查特定的危机结果，包括抑郁、压力/焦虑和自杀念头。研究结果发现，在最初的冬季天气事件后，总危机对话和自杀念头的数量增加；然而，危机结果在时间上有所不同。在高影响地区，自杀念头在多个时间段（例如，4 周、3 个月、6 个月、9 个月和 11 个月）都高于低影响地区，并且与初始事件的前事件期相比，在 6 个月和 11 个月时都升高了。与低影响地区相比，高影响地区的总危机量在冬季事件开始后 11 个月内仍然居高不下。我们的工作表明，像德克萨斯 2021 年冬季风暴这样的连锁冬季天气事件对心理健康产生了负面影响。需要对不同类型的灾害（例如，连锁、并发事件）和特定的危机结果（例如，抑郁、自杀意念）进行进一步研究，以了解灾难后危机干预的最佳时机。
