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Evaluation of the Situations of Coping With Mental Trauma and Trauma in Emergency Service Personnel Who Medically Intervened to Earthquake Affected People in the 2020 Izmir Earthquake

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2024

Gülseren Keskin  and
Esra Yurt Open the ORCID record for Esra Yurt [Opens in a new window]
Gülseren Keskin
Affiliation:
Atatürk Medical Vocational Training School, İzmir, Turkey
Esra Yurt*
Affiliation:
Ege University Pre-Hospital Emergency Health Services and Disaster Management Program
*
Corresponding author: Esra Yurt; Email: esrayalcin2017@gmail.com.
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Abstract

Objective:

This study aimed to evaluate the mental trauma and coping status of emergency health care workers who responded to the earthquake affected people in the October 2020 Izmir earthquake.

Methods:

This was a descriptive and cross-sectional study. State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Posttraumatic Cognition Inventory, Strategies for Coping with Earthquake Stress Scale (SCESS), and Post-earthquake Trauma Level Determination Scale (PETLDS) were used. Independent t-test, analysis of variance, Tukey’s test, and Pearson’s correlation analysis were used for statistical analysis. Statistical significance was accepted as P ≤ 0.05.

Results:

A total of 113 health-care professionals participated in the study. There is a positive and high degree of correlation between the religious coping sub-dimension of the SCESS and the PETLDS (P < 0.001). There was a moderate positive correlation between the religious coping sub-dimension of the SCESS and the state anxiety (P < 0.001) and trait anxiety (P < 0.001) subscales of the STAI.

Conclusions:

In our study, mental trauma and post-traumatic coping levels of health-care workers who were exposed to earthquakes differed according to age, gender, and educational status. We found that post-earthquake trauma levels were directly related to state and trait anxiety levels and religious coping levels. We found that, after the earthquake, social support seeking behavior, state and trait anxiety levels increased; negative cognitions about self, negative cognitions about the world, and self-blame increased.

Practice implications: This study draws attention to the evaluation of emergency health workers who work at the forefront of disasters in terms of subsyndromal post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is recommended to make plans for psychologically protective and preventive interventions for health-care workers especially after disasters.

Keywords

İzmir earthquaketrauma levelcoping with stresshealth-care workeraffected responder’s stress
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 18 , 2024 , e17
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc

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