Investigation of the Relationship Between Mental Health Status and Sleep Patterns of Children Who Experienced the Kahramanmaraş Earthquake: Data From the Earthquake Region.

Background: The psychological conditions of children exposed to earthquakes, such as somatization, obsessive-compulsive, hostility, and paranoid thought, have not been adequately studied.

Aim: This study was conducted to examine the relationship between the mental states and sleep patterns of children who experienced the Kahramanmaraş earthquake.

Methods: This is a descriptive, cross-sectional, and relational study that included 867 children from 11 provinces of Turkey affected by the earthquake that occurred in Kahramanmaraş on February 6th. The Child Follow-up Form, Mental Symptom Screening Scale, and Child Sleep Habits Scale were used to collect data.

Results: The psychological symptoms (anxiety, depression, somatization, anger-hostility, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, psychotic symptoms, and other issues) experienced by children after the earthquake explained 96.9% of their sleep disturbance. Some of the demographic characteristics, such as age, the status of experiencing loss in the earthquake, the survival status of their mother and father, the survival status of their siblings, the total number of losses after the earthquake, the total number of losses in the nuclear family, total hours spent under the rubble, the hours children waited for their father, mother, and siblings to come out of the rubble, accounted for 77.9% of the mental symptoms (SCL-90).

Conclusions: These results showed the importance of early recognition and treatment of sleep disturbances to prevent possible psychiatric disorders after children have been exposed to natural disasters. It is of great importance to evaluate the mental states of children after the earthquake and to apply appropriate psychiatric interventions.