Citation

Anderson D, Prioleau P, Taku K, Naruse Y, Sekine H, Maeda M, Yabe H, Katz C, Yanagisawa R. Psychiatr. Q. 2015; 87(2): 241-251.

Affiliation

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA, david.anderson@mssm.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11126-015-9381-3

PMID

26169115

Abstract

The March 2011 "triple disaster" (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident) had a profound effect on northern Japan. Many medical students at Fukushima Medical University volunteered in the relief effort. We aimed to investigate the nature of students' post-disaster involvement and examine the psychological impact of their experiences using a survey containing elements from the Davidson Trauma Scale and Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. We collected 494 surveys (70 % response rate), of which 132 students (26.7 %) had volunteered. Volunteers were more likely to be older, have witnessed the disaster in person, had their hometowns affected, and had a family member or close friend injured. In the month after 3/11, volunteers were more likely to want to help, feel capable of helping, and report an increased desire to become a physician. Both in the month after 3/11 and the most recent month before the survey, there were no significant differences in distressing symptoms, such as confusion, anger, or sadness, between volunteers and non-volunteers. Volunteers reported a significantly higher level of posttraumatic growth than non-volunteers. Participating in a greater variety of volunteer activities was associated with a higher level of posttraumatic growth, particularly in the Personal Strength domain. There may be self-selection in some criteria, since students who were likely to be resistant to confusion/anxiety/sadness may have felt more capable of helping and been predisposed to volunteer. However, participation in post-disaster relief efforts did not appear to have a harmful effect on medical students, an important consideration for mobilizing volunteers after future disasters.

Language: en