Abstract:
Mental health is an essential component of the well-being of people exposed to
disasters, and is critical to successful rehabilitation and development of societies in the
aftermath. The purpose of this descriptive research was to determine the predictive
power of personal factors, severity of disaster, resilience, social support and
posttraumatic stress disorder after 2004 Tsunami on the well-being of older adults
residing in Takuapa District, Phang-Nga Province, Thailand. A total of 230 primary
victim older adults were face to face interviewed to complete 6-part questionnaires.
Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and analytical statistics with the level
of significance at 0.05.
The results showed that occupation after exposure, income and sufficiency of
income were positively related to well-being (r = 0.457, p=0.007; r =0.287, p<0.001
and r =0.270, p<0.001, respectively), while participants medical conditions, direct
exposure, injures and perceived effect of tsunami on respondents were negatively
related to well-being (r = -0.255, p<0.001; r= -0.172, p= 0.016 and r = -0.598,
p<0.001, respectively).Total resilience was positively related to well-being (r = 0.719,
p<0.001) and social support was positively related to well-being (r = 0.504, p<0.001),
while posttraumatic stress disorder was negatively related to well-being (r = -.521,
p<0.001).
In the last equation, five predictive variables (resilience, perceived effect of
tsunami on respondents, social support, posttraumatic stress disorder and participants
medical conditions) can jointly predict 67 percent of well-being among primary victim
older adults after exposure.
This research can be used as basic information for organizations which work
with older adults after exposure, or for The Public Health Office which work to
promote well-being. This finding suggests that resilience and social support should be
promoted to increase well-being of older adults after exposure to a disaster.