Psychological status of woman who were evacuated from Chernobyl zone

Evacuees from Chernobyl 30-km zone have been at high risk for developing psychologically stressful status and possible psychosomatic disorders, and we evaluated the psychological status among them. The subject were woman, aged 15-45 years at the time of the accident, who were evacuated to Kiev from Chernobyl 30-km. zone (1558 persons: Group 1) or who had been living in Kiev since before the accident (1931 persons: Group 2). All of the subjects participated in regular health examination at Scientific Center for Radiation Medicine, Kiev, Ukraine and were also administered in 2003 (Group 1) and 2004 (Group 2) 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and Goldberg anxiety and depression scale. We classified the subjects into high-score and low-score groups depending on whether their GHQ-12 score exceeded 3. The mean (SD) age at the examination was 45.9 (8.1) years in Group1 and 46.4 (8.3) years respectively in Group2. The frequency of high GHQ-12 score was significantly higher in Group 1 (18.7%) than in Group 2 (8.2%) and significantly increased with the age (p<0.001). Those with high GHQ-12 score were still significantly (p<0.05) more frequent in Group 1 than in Group 2 after adjustment for age by logistic regression model; the odds ratio (95% CI) was 1.6 (1.25-2.4). The results of the present study indicate that the Chernobyl accident has affected not only their somatic health but also mental health. Such long stressful psychological status put evacuated woman at high risk for developing different psychosomatic disorders.