Cascading disasters and mental health: The February 2021 winter storm and power crisis in Texas, USA
Cascading disasters and mental health: The February 2021 winter storm and power crisis in Texas, USA
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级联灾难与心理健康：2021 年 2 月美国德克萨斯州的冬季风暴和电力危机
DOI：
10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163231
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发表时间：
2023
影响因子：
9.8
通讯作者：
Runkle, Jennifer D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Sugg, Margaret M.;Wertis, Luke;Ryan, Sophia C.;Green, Shannon;Singh, Devyani;Runkle, Jennifer D.
于二零二一年二月，德克萨斯州及美国大部分地区受到严重冷空气爆发及冬季天气事件影响。这一事件导致大规模停电和连锁反应，包括饮用水供应有限，多日停电和大规模基础设施损坏。人们对这些事件对心理健康的影响知之甚少，因为大多数研究主要集中在夏季更常见的飓风，野火或其他自然灾害对心理健康的影响。这项研究旨在分析德克萨斯州2021年冬季天气事件的危机反应，使用危机文本线，这是一种基于文本的消息传递服务，在全国范围内提供保密的危机咨询。到目前为止，危机短信热线是最大的全国性危机短信服务，自2013年成立以来，已有超过800万次危机对话。我们采用了多种分析技术，包括分段回归，中断时间序列，自回归综合移动平均（ARIMA）和差分（DID），以调查所有危机对话的不同暴露时间段。ARIMA和DID被进一步用于检查特定的危机结果，包括抑郁，压力/焦虑和自杀的想法。结果发现，在最初的冬季天气事件后，总的危机对话和自杀的想法增加了;然而，危机结果随时间而变化。在多个时间段内，高影响地区的自杀想法都更高（例如，4周、3个月、6个月、9个月和11个月），与低影响地区相比，与事件发生前6个月和11个月的时间段相比，这些时间段有所升高。在冬季事件开始后的11个月内，高影响地区的危机总量也高于低影响地区。我们的工作强调了级联冬季天气事件，如德克萨斯州2021年冬季风暴，对心理健康产生了负面影响。未来的研究需要跨越不同的灾害类型（例如，级联，并发事件）和特定的危机结果（例如，抑郁、自杀意念），以了解灾后危机干预的最佳时机。
In February 2021, the state of Texas and large parts of the US were affected by a severe cold air outbreak and winter weather event. This event resulted in large-scale power outages and cascading impacts, including limited access to potable water, multiple days without electricity, and large-scale infrastructure damage. Little is known about the mental health implications of these events, as most research has predominantly focused on the mental health effects of exposure to hurricanes, wildfires, or other natural disasters that are more commonly found in the summer months. This study aimed to analyze the crisis responses from the 2021 winter weather event in Texas using Crisis Text Line, a text-based messaging service that provides confidential crisis counseling nationwide. To date, Crisis Text Line is the largest national crisis text service, with over 8 million crisis conversations since its inception in 2013. We employed multiple analytic techniques, including segmented regression, interrupted time series, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), and difference-in-difference (DID), to investigate distinct time periods of exposure for all crisis conversations. ARIMA and DID were further utilized to examine specific crisis outcomes, including depression, stress/anxiety, and thoughts of suicide. Results found increases in total crisis conversations and for thoughts of suicide after the initial winter weather event; however, crisis outcomes varied in time. Thoughts of suicide in high-impact regions were higher across multiple time periods (e.g., 4-weeks, 3-months, 6-months, 9-months and 11-months) compared to low-impact regions and were elevated compared to pre-event time periods for 6-months and 11-months from the initial event. Total crisis volume also remained elevated for high-impact regions compared to low-impact regions up to 11-months after the beginning of the winter event. Our work highlights that cascading winter weather events, like the Texas 2021 Winter storm, negatively impacted mental health. Future research is needed across different disaster types (e.g., cascading, concurrent events) and for specific crisis outcomes (e.g., depression, suicidal ideation) to understand the optimal timing of crisis intervention post-disaster.