Background: After the 3.11 complex disaster, fear of radioactive contamination and forced evacuation influenced a number of residents to seek psychiatric care.
Objectives: This study assessed the sequential changes in the number of new outpatients and patients with acute stress disorder (ASD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), adjustment disorder, and depression after the Fukushima disaster.
Methods: We distributed questionnaires to 77 psychiatric institutions to determine the number of new outpatients between March and June in 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Findings: There were 771, 1000, and 733 new patients in 2010, 2011, and 2012, respectively. We observed a statistically significant increase in new patients with ASD or PTSD and a significant decrease in patients with depression in 2011, which returned to predisaster levels in 2012.
Conclusions: There were time- and disease-dependent changes in the numbers of psychiatric care-seeking individuals after the 3.11 complex disaster in Fukushima.
Keywords: Fukushima; acute stress disorder; adjustment disorder; depression; disaster; evacuation; nuclear power plant accident; post-traumatic stress disorder.
Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.