Coastal exposure and residents’ mental health in the afected areas by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

This study aims to confirm whether there was an association between sea visibility and coastal proximity and the mental health of coastal residents a devastating tsunami. No previous study has ever explored the association between coastal exposure and the mental health of residents in a post-disaster context. The authors targeted 15 coastal municipalities located in the Miyagi Prefecture, and obtained data from a community-based cohort study. The baseline survey was initiated 2 years after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and the secondary survey was initiated 6 years after the disaster.

The authors applied multilevel mixed-effects models to the longitudinal data. Our outcome measure was the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6) score. We assessed the data collected from 2,327 respondents on both surveys as of April 2018 for this ongoing cohort study. The study found that neither sea visibility nor coastal proximity was significantly associated with the recovery of mental health after the disaster. However, the study found a distinctive trend of mental health recovery in people who lived alone with a sea view, indicating that visibility of the sea had a negative effect on their mental health immediately after the GEJET, but that the negative effect was subsequently eliminated.