Abstract
No previous study has ever explored the association between coastal exposure and the mental health of residents in a post-disaster context. Therefore, we aimed to confirm whether there was an association between sea visibility and coastal proximity and the mental health of coastal residents a devastating tsunami. We targeted 15 coastal municipalities located in the Miyagi Prefecture, and obtained data from a community-based cohort study. The baseline survey was initiated 2 years after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and the secondary survey was initiated 6 years after the disaster. We applied multilevel mixed-effects models to the longitudinal data. Our outcome measure was the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6) score. We assessed the data collected from 2,327 respondents on both surveys as of April 2018 for this ongoing cohort study. We found that neither sea visibility nor coastal proximity was significantly associated with the recovery of mental health after the disaster. However, we found a distinctive trend of mental health recovery in people who lived alone with a sea view, indicating that visibility of the sea had a negative effect on their mental health immediately after the GEJET, but that the negative effect was subsequently eliminated.
Highlights
Every year, individuals and communities are affected by natural disasters, which can disrupt their mental health and well-being[1]
The aim of this study was to examine whether exposure to the sea is associated with coastal residents’ mental health in a post-disaster context
Most epidemiological studies on the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (GEJET) linking disaster experiences with health outcomes have focused on individual characteristics or social support for elderly p eople[18,19,20]
Summary
Individuals and communities are affected by natural disasters, which can disrupt their mental health and well-being[1]. Another study reported that living near the coast was associated with better mental health for urban adults, with this tendency obvious for the lowest-earning households[9] This indicates that sea-related environmental factors are more likely to affect the mental health of vulnerable socio-demographic populations. Considering socio-demographic vulnerabilities, we aimed to explore the association between exposure to the sea (i.e., coastal proximity and visibility of the sea) and the changes in residents’ mental health in the aftermath of the GEJET. This is the first longitudinal cohort study to examine this relationship in a post-disaster context
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