Abstract
Background and Purpose: The degree of stress of refugees who evacuated the prefecture due to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident concomitant with the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) was evaluated.
Method: An anonymous self-registered investigation based on 34 indicators related to refugees’ psychology (ST34) was performed. Subjective stress, both immediately after the GEJE and three years later, were quantified by VAS method, the difference was calculated, and multiple regression analyses (MRAs) aiming at each were carried out. The explanatory variables were taken as ST34, and 11 factors were extracted by factor analysis.
Results: The total number of respondents was 859 (recovery rate 21.0%), and Cronbach’s α of ST34 met the reliability standard of 0.8. In MRAs for each item of the ST34, only relocation was correlated with a decrease in stress. Of the 11 factors, those that saw an increase at the p<0.001 level immediately after the earthquake were human relationship changes, mobility, sickness, and taking out loans.
Discussion: Unlike life events in a general life, extraordinary events such as the death of close relatives, the collapse of houses, etc. occur at almost the same time in the event of a major disaster. For this reason it was confirmed that the degree of subjective stress increases additively due to simultaneous overlap of serious events.
