38-1 Effectiveness of Post Typhoon Morakot Disaster School Mental Health Interventions and Reflection on the Process of Implementation
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of a team of psychologists' post disaster mental health interventions on reducing the traumatic stress of children in the affected areas. The study contains two parts. One is to discern the effectiveness of such a psychological rehabilitative work delivered by the psychologists and the other is to describe the process of such work in relieving psychological trauma for the children. The research methods included questionnaires and interviews. For the quantitative component of the study, the participants included 2,137 students and the analysis was conducted using Hierarchical Linear Models (HLM) to answer the question: ”Does the interventions program effectively reduce the traumatic distress index reported by the participants?” Additionally, the researcher interviewed 10 psychologists and asked them to describe the entire experiences of implementing the post disaster mental health program in the affected areas. This study identified some important findings. First, the traumatic distress index scores of the participants were significantly reduced after the mental health interventions. Second, it is recommended that the interventions program should be directed towards school teachers as additional targets of the service. Lastly, it is essential that the psychologists engaging in such a post-disaster interventions work to possess the qualities and the skills of culture sensitivity, self care, and clinical flexibility.
Keywords
natural disaster ； post trauma stress syndromes
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