【Objectives】 The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 had a considerable psychological impact on both children and adults, and it is important to investigate the support and recovery programs for these victims. This study examined students forced by radiation out of their normal living environment and compared them with students who were relatively unharmed by the earthquake but go to schools where evacuees have transferred. This study explores children's mental health, resilience, and other related factors six months after the earthquake.
【Methods】 A survey was performed on 555 students attending a public junior high school in X. Prefecture that had accepted students from the disaster area. The group of students from the disaster area was composed of 55 students from junior high grades 1 through 3. The other students at the accepting school served as the control group. The survey involved basic information such as school year, class, gender, etc., and “subjective happiness,” “optimism,” “self-worth,” “problem-solving behavior,” and “personal vulnerability” were used as measures of individual factors. “Scale of emotional support network” was used as a measure of environmental factors. A variety of approaches, such as comparing disaster areas and non-disaster areas, were used to examine mental health and resilience.
【Results】 No clear significant differences were observed in mental health between disaster area students and the control group. Nevertheless, when looking at how individual personality traits affect resilience, although there were no differences between genders or school years, there was a significant difference for “subjective happiness” in disaster area students. Regarding the relationships between personality traits and support cognition, which acts as an environmental factor, “subjective happiness” for intrafamilial support cognition and “optimism” for extrafamilial support cognition were significantly higher for disaster area students. For correlation between support cognition and resilience, there was a significant difference in extrafamilial support cognition for disaster area students. For correlation between resilience and mental health, disaster area students had a higher value than the control group and the difference was significant. Resilience was shown to increase as support cognition increases, which leads to an increase in mental health.
