Biblioteca Virtual en Salud

Backgrond An earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Ritcher scale struck the city of Bam in Iran on the 26th at 5.26 A.M. It was devasting, and left over 40,000 dead and around 30,000 injured. The profound tragedy of thousands killed has caused emotional an psychological trauma of tens of thousands of people who have survived. A study was carried otu to assess psychological distress among Bam earthquake survivors and factors associated with serever mental health in those who survived the tragedy.

Methods:

This was population-based study measuring psychological distress amoong the survivors of Bam earthquake in Iran. Using a multi-stage stratified sampling method a random sample of individual aged 15 years and over living in Bam wee interviewed. Psychologial distress was measured using the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHW-12).

Results:

In all 916 survivors were interviewed. The mean age of the respondents was 32.9 years (SD=12.4), mostly were males (53%), married (66%) and had secndary school education (50%). Forty-one percent reported they lost 3 to 5 members of their family in the earthquake. In addition the findigns showed that 58% of the repondents suffered from severe mental health as measured by the GHQ-12 and this was three times higher than reported psychological distress among the general population. There were significant differences between sub-groups of the study sample with regard to their psychological distress. The results of the logistic regression analysis also indicated that female gender; lower education, unemployment, and loss of family members were associated with severe physcological distress among earthquake victims. (AU)