Abstract
We conducted 4 times surveys starting from June 2011 and continuing through February 2013, in order to check up stress response of local government workers who suffered The Great East Japan Earthquake (Higashi Nihon Daishinsai) with K6 and Comprehensive Stress Response Inventory (CSI). Our study has three aims. First, we will organize the chronological pattern of stress responses. Second, we will examine how the initial disastrous condition and attributes of survey participants relate to the chronological pattern of subsequent stress responses. Third, we will examine how the current stress responses interplay with the chronological pattern of stress responses.
Result of this study show that (1) chronological patterns of stress response are classified into 8 clusters (no-stress response maintaining group, low-stress response maintaining group, low-stress response to no-stress response slow improvement group, middle-stress response to high-stress response slow deteriorated group, middle-stress response to low-stress response slow improvement group, low-stress response to no-stress response rapid improvement group, high-stress response to low-stress response rapid improvement group, severe-stress response maintaining group ――13.55% of local government workers remained at a high level of stress 15 months after the earthquake), (2) damage of domicile and living outside their domiciles relate to stress response of local government workers, (3) two factors of CSI (stress response to a disaster and autonomic symptoms) relate with state at the outset of disaster and other two factors of CSI (anxiety / tense and displeasure / anger) relate with recent conditions. We mainly discussed two themes about point of attention in mental health care for local government workers at a natural disaster and points of attention in assessment of PTSD-like response.
