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Novel treatment (new drug/intervention; established drug/procedure in new situation)
CASE REPORT
Enhancement of PTSD treatment through social support in Idobata-Nagaya community housing after Fukushima’s triple disaster
  1. Arinobu Hori1,2,
  2. Tomohiro Morita3,
  3. Izumi Yoshida4,
  4. Masaharu Tsubokura3,5
  1. 1Department of Psychiatry, Hori Mental Clinic, Fukushima, Japan
  2. 2Department of Disaster and Comprehensive Medicine, Fukushima Medical University School of Medicine, Fukushima, Japan
  3. 3Internal Medicine, Soma Central Hospital, Fukushima, Japan
  4. 4Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary
  5. 5Department of Public Health, Fukushima Medical University School of Medicine, Fukushima, Japan
  1. Correspondence to Dr Arinobu Hori, arinobu.h{at}gmail.com

Summary

Cognitive–behavioural therapy is a first-line treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but it is difficult to implement in disaster settings. We report the case of an 80-year-old Japanese woman, who was diagnosed with PTSD after the 2011 triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant accident) in Fukushima. Her recovery was greatly enhanced by the social support she received while living in Idobata-Nagaya community housing, established by Soma city in Fukushima, where residents could naturally discuss their traumatic experiences. Habituation to traumatic memories and processing of cognitive aspects of the psychological trauma, which are therapeutic mechanisms of trauma-focused psychotherapies, spontaneously occurred in this setting. The details of this case support the effectiveness of Idobata Nagaya as a provider of psychological first aid, an evidence-informed approach to assist children, adolescents, adults and families in the aftermath of a disaster.

  • anxiety disorders (including ocd and ptsd)
  • psychiatry of old age
  • cognitive behavioural psychotherapy

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2018-224935

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors All the authors have approved the manuscript and agree with submission. AH treated the patient and drafted the manuscript, and TM and IY made significant contributions to the manuscript. MT designed the study and revised the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.