Disaster preparedness / Disaster Victims Often Feel Stressed and Anxious; Some Basic Steps Could Keep Them from Mental Illness

The Yomiuri Shimbun

10:00 JST, December 16, 2024

Post-disaster stress could lead to mental illness

Those who have experienced a disaster, regardless of age or gender, are likely to feel significant stress and anxiety due to changes in their environment, and this can lead to mental health problems.

Most people recover over time, but if these problems persist, they can bring on various illness. It is important to know the signs of stress and to respond to them appropriately.

Temporary instability

The importance of providing mental health care after a disaster has been recognized since the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, when a number of disaster victims reported mental health problems.

Soon after the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, which struck in January, the Ishikawa prefectural government set up a mental health care center that provided consultation services. By September, the center had received 612 calls from men and women in their 20s to 80s.

According to the center, people called to express their concerns over jobs and how to use a system for publicly funded demolition of their homes. Some also discussed how watching news about the disaster caused them anguish.

Disaster victims who have been in life-threatening situations can temporarily become mentally unstable and are susceptible to mental and physical disorders, including sleep disorders, a sense of isolation and irritability. These occur as the body and mind grow tense in an attempt to protect the individual.

It is important for people in such states of mind, as well as those around them, to understand that these are normal reactions, as this will help to reduce their anxiety.

Most people recover over time, but how long that recovery takes will vary from person to person. Some people with long-lasting mental health problems may grow depressed or develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

People can reduce their risk of developing a mental illness by taking steps to maintain their well-being, according to Kotaro Otsuka, a professor of psychiatry at Iwate Medical University.

“The first step is making it so you can live without worry. This includes rebuilding your home and securing an income. It’s also important to maintain connections with the local community so you can, for instance, share your thoughts with public health nurses and other local supporters,” Otsuka said.

Shifting feelings

The mental state of disaster victims is thought to change over time.

While some people are left dazed and in shock immediately after a disaster, others act with bravery and proactively face difficulties to protect their families, according to Yoshiharu Kim, honorary director of the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry.

The period during which people unite to overcome their difficulties and feel uplifted is known as the “honeymoon period.”

That honeymoon, however, does not last long.

As public interest wanes and financial, volunteer and other support dwindles, people may find their physical and mental fatigue are at their worst as they face a lack of progress on rebuilding.

Once people have a clear idea of how they are going to rebuild, they start to cheer up again. However, some will feel left behind and grow alienated.

“The degree of the change varies from person to person. People often face complicated emotions as they rebuild their mental health,” Kim said.

An effective way to relax both mind and body, according to Kim, is to take a small breath, slowly exhale and then hold your breath, repeating this process over five minutes. It is recommended to do this three times a day in your spare time.

“Fix disruptions in your daily life to prevent your mental health from being affected by them,” Kim suggests.

On its website, the University of Tsukuba’s department for disaster and community psychiatry introduces tips for staying calm. These include sharing your feelings of anxiety with someone close to you.

Watch children carefully

Children will react differently to a natural disaster depending on their developmental stage. Young children need special attention.

Children up to age 3 will sometimes hold on to their parents and caregivers, refuse to be separated from them and stop drinking formula, according to Miyuki Akasaka of Tokyo-based Save the Children Japan. Some children ages 4 to 6 start to act more like a baby. For such children, parents and caregivers should try to make physical contact, such as with hugs, and make them feel secure by offering kind words.

Gradually, children will start to play pretend, recreating their experience of the disaster. “This is an important process for children to understand and overcome what happened to them in their own way. I hope parents and caregivers will not try to stop them, but will attentively watch over them instead,” Akasaka said.

Children in junior high school and older can be aggressive, feel depressed or become immersed in self-accusatory thoughts, wondering why they were the only ones that were saved. Since their generation depends more on friends than families, they may feel more emotionally stable if they can interact with their friends on the Line messaging app or via other digital means of communication. Save the Children Japan offers a leaflet about Psychological First Aid for Children on its website.

When a child is having difficulty in their daily life, seek advice from nearby experts such as school counselors and doctors who visit shelters.

“Parents and caregivers should understand what children need and support them so that they can deal with their issues on their own,” Akasaka said.

Photo taken by hiker captures calm before eruption

By Tomoko Kito / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Mt. Ontake, which straddles the border between Nagano and Gifu prefectures, erupted 10 years ago, resulting in Japan’s worst volcanic disaster in modern times and leaving 63 people dead. I visited the Ontakesan Visitor Center at the foot of the mountain in Kiso, Nagano Prefecture, where I saw on exhibit a metal handrail bent out of shape by falling volcanic rocks and a wall of a building with large holes in it.

What caught my eye was one photo in which gray volcanic smoke rises from the mountain slope into the clear blue sky, and hikers near the top of the mountain watch the smoke with curiosity.

The photo was taken by a hiker who died in the eruption. It was the autumn leaves season, and hikers were enjoying some quiet time near the top of the mountain.

However, soon after the photo was taken, small and large volcanic rocks exploded out of the mouth of the volcano about 500 meters away and struck people. Some ran into a mountain hut and survived the eruption, but the pyroclastic flow that came along with the rocks obscured people’s vision like a powerful sandstorm and prevented them from escaping.

“Some people might have been able to escape if they had run away soon after they realized the mountain was erupting,” said Kim Haengyoong, a designated associate professor at Nagoya University who conducts research at the university’s facility inside the visitor center. “But people can’t decide whether they should evacuate if they don’t know what’s going on.”

I am sure the bereaved family of the hiker who took the photo thought their loved one should not have taken it, that they should have run away instead. The family must have suffered much and decided to offer the photo to the center in the hopes that it would help raise awareness about the need to prepare for eruptions. Now, the photo is a quiet testament to the danger of eruptions.

In 2014, just after I joined The Yomiuri Shimbun, I interviewed the bereaved family members of people killed in the eruption. Their words still ring in my years: “My child must have tried hard [to escape], but he didn’t make it back home.” They spoke as though they had to wring the words out of themselves.