| Research Abstract |
On 26 December 2004, a large earthquake occurred off the west coast of Sumatra and devastating tsunami struck surrounding countries. Sri Lanka was the second most seriously affected country after Indonesia, with more than 31,000 deaths and 4,000 people missing. The purpose of the study was to elucidate the relationship between factors of tsunami-related exposure and psychological effects among the residents in southern Sri Lanka. A survey of personal interview by using questionnaire was conducted on the subjects who were living in the differentially affected areas (i. e. severely, moderately and little affected area) of Matara district, southern Sri Lanka at the time of tsunami attack. The questionnaire included information about demographic (age, sex and marital status), socio-economic (occupation, education and religion) and lifestyle (smoking and drinking habit) factors and somatic health condition (activities of daily living, presence of chronic diseases and self-rated health statu
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s). Detailed questions about objective and subjective features of tsunami-related exposure (death of family member, suffering serious injury, damage of house, forced relocation and thoughts of fear) were also included. Posttraumatic stress disorder and depressive symptoms were assessed by Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), respectively. General Health Questionnaire 12-item version (GHQ-12) was also used to assess general mental health status. A total of about 600 subjects were included in the survey. In our preliminary analysis, objective and subjective features of tsunami-related exposure were associated with mental health conditions. The result that mental damage of the region where the damage of the tsunami was large was weaker than that of small region damage was obtained. Moreover, a significant difference was not seen by the man and woman in mental damage. Because the difference of mental damage by each area of devastation has the possibility of changing in several years, a continuous investigation is necessary. Data concerning the dementia was not able to be collected by the mistake of clarifying senior citizen's PTSD and the relation of the dementia the purpose of the research, and investigations. Therefore, the present study decided to put out the result of PTSD concerning the senior citizen in the study region from IES-R, GHQ12, and the base attribute, etc. Less
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