Posttraumatic stress disorder and complicated grief in bereaved parents of the Sewol Ferry disaster exposed to injustice following the loss

Hyunjung Choi and Sun-mi Cho

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2020, vol. 66, issue 2, 163-170

Abstract: Background: Perceived justice after man-made disaster bereavement may involve as a protective factor in the recovery process. However, perceived justice related to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complicated grief (CG) after disaster bereavement has not been sufficiently discussed in previous studies. Aims: This study aims to assess PTSD and CG in bereaved parents of Sewol disaster and to explore whether perceived justice is related with the diagnostic groups. Methods: Bereaved parents of Sewol disaster ( N  = 122) were interviewed approximately 2 years after the incident. Structured interviews for PTSD and CG were assessed, and perceived institutional justice surrounding the incident was measured. Symptom groups were identified, and multinomial logistic regression was conducted to find whether perceived justice was related with PTSD or CG. Results: Participants showed high rates of CG and PTSD, and were classified into the both PTSD and CG group, the CG-only group and the resilient group. The analysis revealed that less perceived justice and being a mother increased the likelihood of having both PTSD and CG. Less perceived justice also showed a tendency to be associated with having CG without PTSD. Conclusion: Parents bereaved by the Sewol disaster had high PTSD and CG related to lower levels of perceived justice surrounding the post-disaster period. Post-disaster environment seeking justice may facilitate the natural grieving process or encourage access to effective individual interventions.

Keywords: Disaster; bereavement; posttraumatic stress disorder; complicated grief; justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020764019894607 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:66:y:2020:i:2:p:163-170

DOI: 10.1177/0020764019894607

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().