The Great East Japan Earthquake was a complex disaster with a variety of
destructive effects, including tsunami damage and damage due to the nuclear
power plant accident. Local public employees who work for
disaster-struck municipalities, while themselves disaster victims, are engaged
in unimaginably difficult work including disaster relief and recovery.
This study presents the outcomes of a two-stage panel survey on mental
health conducted once in 2015 and once in 2016. The subjects were 672
local public employees in one disaster group that suffered tsunami damage
and another disaster group that suffered damage from the nuclear disaster.
Results showed the high-risk rate on the Impact of Event Scale-Revised
(IES-R) was 11.9% for the tsunami-disaster group and 31.4% for the nuclear-
accident group at Time 1. At Time 2, it was 8.9% for the
tsunami-disaster group and 27.2% for the nuclear-accident group. From
Time 1 to Time 2, the high-risk rate significantly decreased in both groups,
but the percentage of high-risk persons remained elevated in the nuclear-
accident group. In addition, factors predicting high risk for mental
health issues by group were examined by logistic regression analysis. As a
result, it was shown that the risk of traumatic stress and psychiatric disorders
was increased by the occurrence of burnout as a result of high stress
due to work experience after the disaster. Based on these results, future
issues concerning stress care for local disaster public employees were
discussed
