TY - JOUR PY - 2004// TI - Mental disorders in victims of terrorism and their families JO - Medicina clinica A1 - Baca Baldomero, Enrique A1 - Cabanas-Arrate, María Luisa A1 - Pérez-Rodríguez, Maria de Las Mercedes A1 - Baca-Garcia, Enrique SP - 681 EP - 685 VL - 122 IS - 18 N2 - BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: To find out whether victims of terrorism and their relatives have higher prevalence of affective, anxiety, and alcohol abuse disorders than the general population. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Between January 1997 and January 2001, 544 families affected by terrorist violence in Spain were interviewed. Victims and their relatives (n = 1,021) were evaluated by means of the PRIME-MD. They were classified according to the degree of involvement in the attacks as: relatives of victims (RV), direct victims (DV) and direct victims who were also relatives of other victims (DVRV). Their scores were compared with those of a primary health-care sample. RESULTS: Depressive symptoms were more prevalent among victims (DVRV, 59.2%; DV, 57.6%; RV, 50.2%) than among controls (40.0%) (p = 0.036) and their prevalence was directly related to the degree of involvement in the attacks. Similar results were obtained for anxiety disorders (DVRV, 52.6%; DV, 56.5%; RV, 45.0%, and controls 26.4%) (p = 0.017). Alcohol abuse prevalence (DVRV, 6.6%; RV, 5.9%) was very close to that of the primary health-care sample (4.8%) with the exception of direct victims (DV, 15.9%) in whom it was higher (p = 0.016). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of psychopathology was higher among victims of terrorism than among primary health-care patients and it was directly related to the involvement in the attack. Low perceived social support, family and personal history of psychiatric disease, and type of attack (explosives) increased the risk of suffering mental disorders.

Language: es

LA - es SN - 0025-7753 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -