Long-term mental health outcomes following the 2004 Asian tsunami disaster: a comparative study on direct and indirect exposure

Abstract

There is inadequate information on the long-term mental health outcomes among disaster victims in low and middle income countries. It is especially so for the vast majority of victims who are indirectly exposed to disasters. To address this gap in knowledge we examined the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity, particularly anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the 2004 Asian tsunami victims in India, 4.5 y after the disaster. It was also intended to compare the mental health outcomes of the victims with direct exposure to tsunami waters and those who were indirectly exposed to tsunami disaster (people living near the sea who escaped tsunami waters but witnessed the disaster and suffered various losses). In a cross-sectional epidemiological study, 666 randomly selected victims in South India were assessed for psychiatric morbidity through the Self-Reporting questionnaire (SRQ), Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale, Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, Self-Rating Scale for PTSD (SRS-PTSD) and suicidality screening. The disaster experience, quality of life and socio-demographic profile were also assessed. Psychiatric morbidity based on SRQ was 77.6% and estimated prevalence of anxiety symptoms (23.1%), depression (33.6%), PTSD (70.9%) and comorbidity (44.7%) suggested nature and extent of the psychiatric morbidity in the tsunami victims. The direct exposure group had a significantly greater proportion of psychiatric morbidity based on SRQ, anxiety symptoms and suicide attempts. Factors which predicted psychiatric morbidity were: lack of formal education, perception of disaster as highly stressful, damage to home and loss of livelihood and livestock. In conclusion, a large proportion of Asian tsunami victims were observed to have continuing mental health problems 4.5 y after the disaster, which highlighted the need for psychiatric services for the affected communities.