Special Report – PTSD in the aftermath – Macau Business

Two different studies, carried out one year apart, establish the existence of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Macau Business | August 2022 | Special Report | Hatosghost5yearson

One month after of one of the most serious natural disasters ever to strike southern China, 1,876 Chinese university students in Macau were recruited into a cross-sectional study aimed at investigating key exposure-related risk factors for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while examining the effect of media exposure on the prevalence of disaster-related PTSD.

The team led by Brian J. Hall (Global and Community Mental Health Research Group, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau) also included researchers from China and the USA, in addition to a majority from Macau.

According to these scientists, direct exposure to natural disasters and related losses are associated with PTSD. It is less clear whether indirect media exposure is associated with PTSD.

The results were clear: the prevalence of PTSD was 5.1 per cent.

The prevalence of PTSD was 6.5 per cent among local Macau (SAR)-born students, 5.6 per cent among Hong Kong (SAR)-born students and 2.3 per cent among students born in mainland China.

[This prevalence is lower than the 7.3 per cent reported among adolescents 6 months after Hurricane Andrew (Bahamas and USA), and it is also low compared with the reported prevalence of 9.4 per cent among disaster exposed volunteers 1.54 months after Super Typhoon Haiyan (Philippines0. This variation in prevalence may be due to many factors, including the difference in assessment methods, characteristics of the population, and the severity of disasters.]

Adjusted models demonstrated that being male (vs female), having endured home damage, witnessing people injured, and almost drowning during the storm were associated with PTSD.

After adjusting for direct exposure, indirect exposure to disaster related social media content, including information related to drowning victims and residents emotional reactions, was associated with PTSD.

By contrast, viewing more information about the storm itself and images of heroic acts were significantly associated with lower odds of PTSD.

While the work of Professor Hall and team was carried out in the aftermath of the Hato event, Connie Ip Hong Nei took a year to evaluate the Prosocial Behaviour in the Aftermath of Typhoon Hatoand to find the Relationship with Empathic Self-Efficacy, Emotional Distress, and Exposure to Social-Related Media Among Macau Citizens, with the help of 288 Macau adult residents.

Connie Ip presented her dissertation to the Faculty of the California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University (Hong Kong Campus), in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Psychology.

Despite the fact that only 10 per cent of participants experienced significant property damage or loss of incomeand most participants experienced only superficial damage to their homes, emotional distress a year after the typhoon was still significant Connie Ip

Ms Ip concluded that, in this sample, the most commonly reported sources of inconvenience and loss were loss of utilities and superficial damage to homes. Approximately 42 per cent of the participants had significant temporary loss of water and electricity services in their homes, around 10 per cent of the participants reported damage to their personal property outside of their home, and approximately 23 per cent reported superficial damage to where they lived. Fewer than 10 per cent of the participants had significant property damage or significant loss of income or business.

Despite the fact that only 10 per cent of participants experienced significant property damage or loss of incomeand most participants experienced only superficial damage to their homes, emotional distress a year after the typhoon was still significant, she wrote.

The author estimated the level of traumatic stress of the current sample due to Typhoon Hato and concluded that nearly 20 per cent of the participants experienced clinical symptoms of traumatic stress a year after Typhoon Hato.

Results also showed 59 per cent of the participants showed increases in psychological distress in the immediate aftermath of the flood, and 55 per cent of those participants showed significant elevations of distress a year later, although overall distress had declined compared to the period shortly after the flooding.

Participants described a variety of common helping behaviours after the typhoon, including distributing water to those in need, participating in volunteer services, and sharing important information with others on the Internet. The most common form of helping both immediately after Typhoon Hato and a year later was checking in with family and friends, the dissertation reads.

The radio

The team led by Brian J. Hall quotes several studies saying that in the aftermath of disaster, people tend to seek information about the potential threat to reduce anxiety but instead they are exposed to distressing content on the media which may increase their stress.

Consistent with the relative risk appraisal model, we might expect that the magnitude and rarity of a typhoon such as Hato may have signalled a high level of threat, which would be worsened by media exposure, they add.

Among various forms of media, only listening to radio programmes was significantly associated with PTSD in multivariable analyses. This is counterintuitive, as youth do not mainly use the radio.

However, according to the Macao Government report, there were 250,000 households left without power, and with no access to the internet. The radio was the only source of information during the disaster, and in some districts, the electricity supply and internet service only resumed 1 week after the typhoon.

Therefore, people most affected by the typhoon relied on radio to obtain access to media reports about the storm and recovery efforts since other forms of media were not available.

Conclusion: these findings add to the literature demonstrating that some types of media use and certain media content following a natural disaster are associated with PTSD.

But the authors highlight another notable finding: viewing more information related to the storm itself (i.e. objective information) and viewing images of people being heroic were protective factors for PTSD.

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Special Report - PTSD in the aftermath - Macau Business