[A field study of posttraumatic stress disorder in a community after Typhoon Rusa]

Abstract

Purpose: In South Korea, as growing the need of psychological support in disaster situation psychological assessment on stress after disaster is important to find out the factors affecting coping, and to plan intervention in the community.

Method: The volunteers of Korea Redcross who live around K city, and the research team visited all homes at Jirye town, one of the high-impact area, 4 month after the typhoon. One of the family members who is over 18 years old, answered the self-report questionnaire composed of disaster experience, damage, exposure to traumatic event, and posttraumatic stress with IES-K (Impact of Event Scale-korea) He also, described his family members symptom related to re-experiencing, hyper-arousal, and avoidance. Six hundreds households were surveyed.

Result: The prevalence of moderate to severe PTSD symptom was 36% of the subjects. The severity of PTSD was affected by gender, economic status and affected by damaged property, physical injury, worsening existing disease, getting infectious disease, amount of experienced traumatic event before disaster, warning, taking shelter, and subjects revealed differences in somatization as severity of PTSD. According to the description, community members had re-experiencing, hyper-arousal and avoidance.

Conclusion: At a rural area, South Korea, community members have suffered from psychological distress after disaster. So psychological interventions are required as affecting factors and also to plan for warning and shelter in disaster situation is needed for preventing PTSD.