The Relationship Between Quality of Life and Psychiatric Impairment for a Taiwanese Community Post-Earthquake

Abstract

This purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between quality of life and psychiatric impairment in a Taiwanese community located near the epicenter of the 1999 earthquake, as assessed four to six months after the natural catastrophe. Trained assistants interviewed the 4223 respondents using the disaster-related psychological screening test (DRPST), an instrument specifically designed and validated by senior psychiatrists for assessment of psychiatric impairment after natural catastrophe. Additionally, the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) was used to evaluate quality of life. The collected results were analyzed using Windows SPSS 10.0 software. Psychiatric impairment rated moderate to severe was assessed for 1448 (34.3%) of the responding residents. The 4223 respondents were divided into 4 psychiatric-impairment groups based on DPRST score: healthy (n = 952); mild impairment (n = 1823); moderate impairment (n = 1126); and, severe impairment (n = 322). The four groups were compared for a number of salient factors, including gender, age, current marital status and psychiatric-impairment score, to determine impact on quality of life. Respondents assessed as psychiatrically impaired tended to be older, female, divorced/widowed, and less educated, and they were more likely to have experienced major familial financial loss as an immediate consequence of the earthquake. Further, the greater the severity of the psychiatric impairment, the lower the scores for quality of life, for both the physical and mental aspects of this important general indicator.

Long term quality of life after a wildfire disaster in a rural part of Greece

“…Similar results regarding demographic variables have been reported in a number of studies on victims of disasters e.g. [11][12][13]30], and also in other causes of trauma (e.g. in post-conflict displaced populations, [31]).…”

“…They reported that one year after the earthquake elderly people had a lower quality of life in domains related to physical health, psychological well-being, and environment compared to baseline pre-disaster assessments. Similar results for earthquake disasters were reported by [11,12] and for floods by [13]. In addition, others [14] have reported that high levels of negative post-disaster adjustment were associated with personal injuries, resource loss, and increased psychopathological symptoms.…”

“…The quality of life in the aftermath of a disaster also depended on the severity of the psychiatric impairment. The more the psychiatric problems are, the lower the quality of life becomes [12,15,16]. Thus, there are indications that after a disaster the affected population except of the direct losses from the disaster suffers for longer time from secondary psychosocial problems which may impair the quality of life in the community for quite some time.…”

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“…The concept of HRQoL, focusing on functioning, has become increasingly popular in clinical and community samples as a valuable measure of overall subjective health in terms of biopsychosocial well-being and limitations. Nevertheless, only a few studies have addressed HRQoL after disastrous events; these demonstrated impaired HRQoL after various types of disasters [13][14][15][16][17][18], and after the September 11th terrorist attack [19].…”

Sex Difference in Fear: From Epidemiological, Neuroimaging, and Animal Studies

“…Ceyhan, E. & Ceyhan, A., 2007;Choul et al, 2004;Tsai et al, 2007PTSD Germain et al, 2006Lensi et al, 1996Reed & Wittchen, 1998Bezerra De Menezes et al, 2008 Roberson-Nay et al, Turk et al, 1998 Bezerra Weisenbach et al, 2012Cahill et al, 2001Cahill et al, 2004;Canli et al, 2002Derntl et al, 2009Dickie & Armony, 2008Ohrmann et al, 2010PTSD Felmingham et al 2010 PTSD …”