Mental health implications for older adults after natural disasters – a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Given the global rise in the number of older adults affected by natural disasters, mental health services need to be prepared to meet their needs following natural disasters, particularly around the early detection and management of PTSD.

Health-Related Rehabilitation after the 2008 Great Wenchuan Earthquake in China: A Ten Year Retrospective Systematic Review

“…The interventions were also effective in treating and reducing the survivors' PTSD symptoms like anxiety and depression, and also in enhancing their psychological resilience [35,36,38,39]. These findings are consistent with previous results from a broad systematic literature review and meta-analysis studies that similarly explored the different rehabilitation interventions, services and outcomes in post-earthquake settings, and those following other disasters within and outside China [2,[13][14][15]43,44,[48][49][50][51][52]. Encouragingly, some of the HRR programs after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, such as physical and physiological rehabilitation, commenced within the first 5 months after the earthquake, which is commendable and helped to ameliorate long-term impacts such as injuries and PTSD from turning into acute problems for survivors that would prevent them from returning to normal life.…”

“…Earthquakes, like any other disasters, are traumatic events and they result in a range of physical, mental and psychological health consequences [2,8,[12][13][14][15]43,[50][51][52]56]. Indeed, this is attested to in the results of six studies in our systematic review [35][36][37][38][39]41]-which showed a high prevalence of PTSD among the different groups of survivors of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.…”

“…Indeed, this is attested to in the results of six studies in our systematic review [35][36][37][38][39]41]-which showed a high prevalence of PTSD among the different groups of survivors of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. PTSD aroused several symptoms such as anxiety, depression, anger, stress, psychoticism, somatization, sleep disorders, interpersonal sensitivity and violence, as well as thoughts, feelings, or stimuli associated with the traumatic events, among victims [2,[12][13][14][15][35][36][37][38][39]41,44,51,52,56,57]. Again, this argument concurs with the findings of an earlier systematic review and meta-analysis studies, which affirmed how a real burden of PTSD is prevalent in many earthquake survivors [12][13][14][15]43,44,49,56,58].…”

Mapping concentrations of posttraumatic stress and depression trajectories following Hurricane Ike

“…A general (non spatial) explanation for this may be that populations at risk (e.g. those with predisaster psychopathology, or those with higher peri-event emotional reactions) are more likely to experience postdisaster mental health problems4539. From our findings, we may assume that in specific situations, i.e., when specific individual- and community-level factors work together, this risk may increase.…”

“…Fourth, the clusters and point locations were mapped in the geographical information system QGIS3839.…”