Continued Conscientious Support
Miyagi Prefecture Mental Health and Welfare Association, a Charitable Corporation
Miyagi Disaster Mental Health Care CenterPresident – Hidekatsu Shirasawa
Three years have passed since that day. Even now, close to 90,000 people throughout theprefecture are being forced to live in evacuation shelters. While both the public and private sectors
are working diligently toward reconstruction, the progress is slow, and we are still quite far awayfrom feeling that the foundation of our lives has been rebuilt. Meanwhile, the scissor disparity
between survivors and disaster areas caused by the reconstruction process itself becomes clearer everyday.
According to a financial year (FY) 2013 health survey conducted among tenants of containertype temporary housing, close to 20% complained of some sort of physical illness, while 8.3% wereexperiencing psychological distress severe enough to warrant support (Kessler Psychological Distress
Scale (K6) score ≥13 points); these figures are 1.8 times those observed during the National Life
Basic Survey. Further, 21.1% became upset when they remember the disaster, 16.0% had insomnia,
and 2.2% drank alcohol during the day. In addition, 19.2% of the respondents answered that they did
not have a counselor. During this time, we have been supporting survivors with the cooperation ofthe Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Endowed Department of Preventive Psychiatry,and related organizations inside and outside the prefecture. If we take a look at the FY 2013
Counseling/Visitation Report of the Miyagi Disaster Mental Health Care Center (MDMHCC), we
have been associated with 6,236 cases; 54.1% of these involved emotional or affective conditions,followed by sleep issues at 25.6% and loss of appetite, high blood pressure, vertigo, and/or otherphysical symptoms at 24.6%. Looking at the background factors, we see many contributing elements,
including changes in living environment, health issues, and mental deterioration. These survey results
indicate that the mental and physical health of survivors continues to be in serious jeopardy, and thatmultilayered, continuous support is still very much needed.
During this time, we have been conducting visitations, mainly for residents of container-type
temporary housing and private chartered housing. In addition, we have given various lectures andcase studies for survivors and their supporters. In the future, relocation of survivors into publicdisaster housing will begin in earnest; however, new situations such as the consolidation of containertype temporary housing are also underway. Most of our cases involve elderly individuals in unstable,
precarious life situations and with health concerns. As it is clear that survivors, who have alreadybeen exposed to a great deal of stress because of the disaster, are being left with no option but to bearfurther stress as a result of the reconstruction process, we believe that continued, conscientious
counseling work that surpasses previous efforts and is centered around visitation activities so as toprevent survivor isolation is of the utmost importance. For this reason, we hope to deepen ourrelationships with municipal public health officials and prefectural/external supporters, and in aneffort to hold up our share of regional mental health care activities, continue to implement support
programming for disaster survivors.