2017 Volume 57 Issue 10 Pages 1005-1012
Japanese Red Cross Kobe Hospital was the headquarter for the Japan Red Cross disaster relief response to the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of January 1995.
In the following January, the Department of Psychosomatic Internal Medicine was established. Its objective was to offer psychosomatic care for patients who had been traumatized by the earthquake. We recognized importance of the psychosomatic medicine in the reconstruction period of the disaster while we gave the medical treatment at the stricken areas. We were engaged in relief activities in Niigata Chuetsu earthquake (2004), the derailment accident of JR Fukuchiyama Line (2005), the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011), afterwards. We associated with people who are engaged in disaster medicine. Then we keenly realized that there were needs of “the psychosomatic medicine” during all periods from the disaster acute period to the disaster reconstruction period. I put together those experiences into this manuscript.
