The Influencing Factors And Research Of Symptoms Of Ptsd In Health Care Workers After The Wenchuan Earthquake

Objective:To follow-up the epidemical morbidity, characteristics of the symptoms, and influencing factors of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among medical staff year and a half after wenchuan earthquake.Methods:A cross-section survey was carried among the medical personnel working in the earthquake region year and a half after the earthquake happened. Special attentions were paid not only to the morbidity, but also to the characteristics of the symptom clusters. Initial exposure, birthplace, whether come from one-child-family and other social-cultural factors were examined on their influences to PTSD level. Results:1. 8 out of 454 medical staff reached the diagnosis criteria of PTSD. The epidemical morbidity is 1.8%. Among all the 23 symptoms, thoughts and feelings of Intrusion is the most prominent one. 2. Comparing the four symptom clusters, hyper-arousal is the most complained one. Women are more suffered in sleeping disorders, hope for the future or ideal and emotional changes than men, although there is no significant difference between both genders in the total PTSD score. 3. Two groups are defined as"higher exposure"and"lower exposure"according to the distance to the epicenter. The two groups had no significant difference in PTSD total score and symptom scores, while high exposure group was more serious than low exposure group in hyper-arousal. 4. The applied General Linear Model (GLM) of the Analysis of Variance showed that 2 out of 8 factors have significantly main effects to the PTSD score: Birthplace (F=4.721, p=0.031) and exposure (F=5.320, p=0.022). The incidence rate of this study was lower than that of six months (5.5%) after the earthquake, the most prominent symptom is still high agitation, and also exposure is the risk factors of PTSD total and symptom scores, this study shows no significant differences in gender.Conclusions:Among medical staff in the earthquake region, the most suffered symptom cluster of long-term PTSD is hyper-arousal. Different degrees of initial exposure have a substantial influence within the cluster of hyper-arousal symptoms. Szechwan and higher initial exposure are the risk factors of total and symptom scores of PTSD. In addition, People coming from the multiple-child family is the risk factors of intrusive symptoms. The hyper-arousal of higher exposure health workers should be paid attention.