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Post-Traumatic Growth and Resilience Among Medical Students After the March 2011 Disaster in Fukushima, Japan

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Abstract

In March of 2011, an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident struck northern Japan causing profound damage to the surrounding area and lasting effects to all those who lived there. Fukushima Medical University (FMU), the closest hospital that remained open during the disaster, was greatly impacted and its students rallied to help the cause. Many of them were directly affected as their neighborhoods were ruined and family and friends were injured or killed. Our study sought to better understand how this disaster impacted their posttraumatic growth and resilience in the wake of the disaster and today, 8 years later. There were three goals of this study. First, we aimed to replicate previous research that showed positive effects of disaster volunteerism on medical students’ posttraumatic growth. Second, we sought to better understand the role of resilience in the wellbeing of these students. Finally, we wanted to explore the advantages to our newly created 10-Factor Resilience Behavioral Scale, which we used alongside the Davidson Trauma Scale (DTS), Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI-X), and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Overall, 579 responses were collected (response rate of 71.9%). Volunteers continued to show greater PTG as well as greater overall resilience. Furthermore, there were positive correlations between students’ feelings of confusion, anger, sadness, guilt or anxiety and their sense of resilience, both at the time of the disaster and in the most recent month, suggesting that within Japanese culture difficult emotions may promote resilient behaviors and actions.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the students, faculty, and staff at Fukushima Medical University. We were particularly grateful to Dr. Sekine for his assistance with the survey organization and distribution. This study was supported by the Arnhold Global Health Institute at Mount Sinai and funded by the 2017 Nippon Life – Japanese Medical Society of America Fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Education, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA

    Halley P. Kaye-Kauderer, Jake Levine & Craig Katz

  2. Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan

    Yuzo Takeguchi & Moeko Machida

  3. International Exchange Affairs, Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan

    Hideharu Sekine

  4. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Kanako Taku

  5. Department of Internal Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA

    Robert Yanagisawa

  6. Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA

    Craig Katz

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  1. Halley P. Kaye-Kauderer
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  2. Jake Levine
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  3. Yuzo Takeguchi
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  4. Moeko Machida
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  5. Hideharu Sekine
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  6. Kanako Taku
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  7. Robert Yanagisawa
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  8. Craig Katz
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Correspondence to Halley P. Kaye-Kauderer.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Kaye-Kauderer, H.P., Levine, J., Takeguchi, Y. et al. Post-Traumatic Growth and Resilience Among Medical Students After the March 2011 Disaster in Fukushima, Japan. Psychiatr Q 90, 507–518 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-019-09646-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-019-09646-z

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