Effects of disaster victims’ social capital on trajectory types of posttraumatic stress disorder: Focused on latent class growth analysis

The purpose of this study was to investigate the trajectory of posttraumatic stress disorder among disaster victims for four years, and examine the effect of social capital on the trajectory types of posttraumatic stress disorder. For this, this study used panel data from the Disaster Victim Panel Survey (wave 1-4) conducted by the National Disaster Management Research Institute, and classified trajectory types of posttraumatic stress disorder using latent class growth analysis. In addition, multinominal logistic regression analysis was conducted to examine socio-demographic, disaster victim, and social capital factors associated with latent groups. The main results are as follows. First, according to the trajectory of posttraumatic stress disorder among disaster victims, the latent groups were classified into three groups, which includes low-risk group (74.2%), moderate-risk group (20.4%), and high-risk group (5.5%). Second, the more level of social solidarity as one of social capital, the study participants were likely to be in a low-risk group rather than a high-risk group or a moderate-risk group. Third, the more having damage of human life, the study participants tended to be in a high-risk group than a low-risk group. Fourth, the worse the subjective health prior to the disaster, the study participants were likely to be in a moderate-risk group than a low-risk group. Based on these results, the study discussed social welfare practice and policy implications for prevention and intervention of posttaumatic stress disorder among disaster victims.