Mental health of nursing students regarding the Moroccan earthquake: A cross-sectional study

Objective

In addition to the economic and social impact, mental health issues are one of health needs during natural disaster such as earthquake. Thus, surveillance for mental health variables is crucial for public health planning. Nursing students as professional students may be particularly vulnerable to adverse mental health effects after an earthquake because of their potential role in emergency response and the challenges associated with providing medical care in crisis conditions. The aim of this research was to assess the mental health of students after six months of the Moroccan earthquake and associated factors.

Method

A cross-sectional survey of student nurses was conducted on March 2024; six months after the Moroccan earthquake in front to 261 students using class sampling method. Three validated psychometric measures, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PCL-C), Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21), and The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) were used to assess the nursing student mental health after Moroccan earthquake.

Results

Anxiety, Depression, Stress and abnormal post-traumatic stress rank was present respectively in 44.8%, 37.1%, 7.7%, 61.3% of participants. However, a minority of students obtained the high resilience score (13.8%). The results showed that the DAS scale correlated negatively with age (p = 0.034). Furthermore, the female gender, 3rd grade students (as final year for the nursing diploma) and those who had lost a family member in the natural disaster obtained higher medians with a significant difference in the DAS scale score (p < 0.05). The post-traumatic stress scale was only affected by material damage (p = 0.044). However, the high level of scores resilience obtained significantly for students living with their families. In contrast, no association between the mental health of nursing students and attending the phenomenon or living near earthquake foci.

Conclusion

This study has demonstrated the crucial need to train healthcare providers in emotion management in the event of a natural disaster, and to launch a priori initiatives, particularly with regard to the mental health of students in health universities, in order to prepare them psychologically for any intervention in the case of an alert.