Pre-disaster family visits and post-evacuation return to Fukushima among psychiatric inpatients evacuated to out-of-area hospitals after the nuclear accident

Yuko Suzuki, Toshihiro Terui, Yasuto Kunii, Takeyasu Kakamu, Tomoo Hidaka, Daisuke Gotoh, Nobuo Anzai, Shin-Ichi Niwa and Hirooki Yabe

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2025, vol. 71, issue 3, 609-611

Abstract: Objective: This study aimed to elucidate the effects of pre-evacuation family hospital visits on post-evacuation returns to Fukushima Prefecture (hometown) among psychiatric inpatients who mandatorily evacuated to hospitals outside the prefecture because of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident. Method: Of the inpatients in Fukushima, 44 were admitted to a hospital in the nearby Soso district on March 11, 2011, and were therefore included in the current analysis. We collected information on their discharge after the evacuation and family visits before the evacuation by reviewing the medical records of both the evacuation destination and former hospitals. Results: The average durations from the accident to post-evacuation return among patients with and those without former family visits were 681.8 days (standard error [SE] = 163.3) and 1,027.8 days (SE = 152.0), respectively. The log-rank test showed a tendency of earlier return to Fukushima among inpatients who had received family visits to the hospital before evacuation ( p  = .073). Conclusions: The results highlight the critical need for close collaboration between psychiatric medical practitioners and families, to not only support patients’ community reintegration into daily life but also facilitate a timely return to their hometowns following long-distance evacuation caused by an unforeseen large-scale disaster.

Keywords: Earthquakes; Fukushima nuclear accident; Japan; psychiatric hospitals; family (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00207640241288684 (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:71:y:2025:i:3:p:609-611

DOI: 10.1177/00207640241288684

Access Statistics for this article

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