Comparing the effect of social media-based drama, music and art therapies on reduction in post-traumatic symptoms among Nigerian refugees of Russia's invasion of Ukraine

PURPOSE

The objective of this study was to ascertain the effectiveness of social media-based music, art and drama therapies in treating PTSD symptoms among Nigerian evacuees from the Russia-Ukraine war.

DESIGN AND METHODS

This study was a quasi-experiment involving a sample of 330 participants that were randomly assigned to control and treatment groups. The treatment group was further classified into three groups according to the different contents of the therapies they received.

RESULTS

The study result showed that social media-based therapies effectively reduced PTSD symptoms for participants in the treatment group, unlike those who did not receive the intervention. Comparatively, drama therapy was more effective than art and music therapies. The reason drama therapy was more effective could be because it engaged the minds and body of the participants more than the other therapies.

CONCLUSION

Although art, music and drama therapies are effective treatment options for reducing symptoms of PTSD among victims of war, drama therapy is the most effective among them all.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

The result of this study has practical implications for health promotion from the perspective of nursing services by showing that social media-based therapies could serve as viable and cost-effectivealternativese to face-to-face group therapy.

Types of coastlines and the evacuees' mental health: A repeated cross-sectional study in Northeast Japan

Although the health risks and benefits of coastal areas have long been researched, these effects of the different types of coastlines have rarely been explored on the evacuees living near the coast, in a post-disaster context. Thus, this study aimed to explore, with the passing of years after a disaster, what kind of coastline is a useful public health resource as a post-disaster reconstruction approach in coastal environments that have suffered significantly from the tsunami disaster in northeast Japan in 2011. This study compared the evacuees' mental health based on proximity to the coast and the types of coastlines (artificial, semi-natural, and natural). Data were drawn from the Miyagi Prefectural Government surveys, which targeted almost all evacuees of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquakes and Tsunami (n = 96,203). We applied a pooled Poisson regression model to a repeated cross-sectional dataset of evacuees' mental health between 2012 and 2016. Moderate psychological distress, measured via the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6) score, was the dependent variable, while proximity to the coast and type of coastline were the independent variables. The estimated main effects of type of coastline indicated that overall associations between K6 ≥5 and all types of coastlines within a 1.6 km buffer of participants' residential space were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). However, among types of coastlines, the interaction terms of semi-natural coastline × year (2015 and 2016) were significantly associated with lower incidence rate ratios (IRR), which decreased in 2015 and 2016 (IRR: 0.88, 95%CI: 0.79-0.98; IRR: 0.78, 95%CI: 0.68-0.90, respectively). Further, we computed the marginal effects of coastline types for each year to observe differences in the impact on moderate psychological distress depending on different accessible coastline types within a distance of 1.6 km from the participants' living space. We found that, after the revision of the coastal act in 2014, the moderate mental stress of participants who lived around semi-natural coastlines significantly tended to be low (dy/dx: -0.04, 95%CI: -0.08-0.01 in 2015; dy/dx: -0.07, 95%CI: -0.11-0.04 in 2016). This finding can encourage policymakers to manage coastal areas with green infrastructure in the post-disaster reconstruction sustainably.

Drinking Behavior and Mental Illness Among Evacuees in Fukushima Following the Great East Japan Earthquake: The Fukushima Health Management Survey

Background

Recent evidence from alcohol and trauma studies suggests that disasters are associated with increases in the consumption of alcohol. The Great East Japan Earthquake and the associated nuclear disaster have continued to affect the mental health of evacuees from Fukushima. This study aimed to extend these findings by examining the relationship between drinking behaviors and the risk of mental illness after the compound disaster.

Methods

We conducted the Mental Health and Lifestyle Survey with 56,543 evacuees. Kessler's K6 was used to assess the risk of mental illness, and logistic regression models were applied to analyze how drinking behavior patterns influence the risk of serious mental illness after adjustment for confounding variables.

Results

Logistic regression analysis evidenced that beginning heavy and light drinkers had the highest and a higher risk of serious mental illness, respectively. Individuals who were nondrinkers pre‐ and postdisaster had the lowest proportional risk of mental illness. Abstainers also had some risk to their mental health after the compound disaster.

Conclusions

The results of this study highlight that beginning drinkers have a high risk of serious mental illness. Thus, mental health professionals should pay attention to the drinking behaviors of evacuees, which might predict increased risk of serious mental illness and consequently indicate a need for psychological intervention.