Item development: focus group interview
To ensure we had a comprehensive view of mental health and psychosocial care after a disaster, we conducted a thorough literature review. Using PubMed and Google, we searched the scientific literature, guidelines, and manuals, which were written in English or Japanese, using search terms including “disaster”, “emergency”, “mental health”, “psychiatry”, “psychology”, “manual”, and “guidelines”.
To reflect local practitioners’ experience and views, focus group interviews were conducted in three areas which experienced a massive earthquake in Japan, one in an urban area and two in rural areas. Local practitioners with diverse professional backgrounds were invited to attend and represented such professions as psychiatry, psychology, social work, nursing, public health, school counseling, and emergency medicine. Each interview was conducted with 5 to 9 participants (24 participants in total number), with great attention given to the representativeness of the participants as members of mental health teams.
After the three focus group interviews, the contents were transcribed and researchers categorized them into four domains regarding disaster management: 1) the disaster mental health system, 2) initial to early response (from the first week to the first month), 3) management of deployed mental health team, and 4) staffs’ stress management.