Abstract
BACKGROUND: Survivors of physical and emotional trauma experience enduring occupational, psychological and quality of life impairments. Examining survivors from a large fire provides a unique opportunity to distinguish the impact of physical and emotional trauma on long-term outcomes. The objective is to detail the multi-dimensional long-term effects of a large fire on its survivor population and assess differences in outcomes between survivors with and without physical injury.
METHODS AND FINDINGS: This is a survey-based cross-sectional study of survivors of The Station fire on February 20, 2003. The relationships between functional outcomes and physical injury were evaluated with multivariate regression models adjusted for pre-injury characteristics and post-injury outcomes. Outcome measures include quality of life (Burn Specific Health Scale-Brief), employment (time off work), post-traumatic stress symptoms (Impact of Event Scale-Revised) and depression symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory). 104 fire survivors completed the survey; 47% experienced a burn injury. There was a 42% to 72% response rate range. Although depression and quality of life were associated with burn injury in univariate analyses (p
CONCLUSIONS: Survivors of this large fire experienced significant life disruption, including occupational, psychological and quality of life sequelae. The findings suggest that quality of life, depression and post-traumatic stress outcomes are related to emotional trauma, not physical injury. However, physical injury is correlated with employment outcomes. The long-term impact of this traumatic event underscores the importance of longitudinal and mental health care for trauma survivors, with attention to those with and without physical injuries.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-15-2012
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0047339
Repository Citation
Schneider, Jeffrey C.; Trinh, Nhi-Ha T.; Selleck, Elizabeth; Fregni, Felipe; Salles, Sara S.; Ryan, Colleen M.; and Stein, Joel, "The Long-Term Impact of Physical and Emotional Trauma: The Station Nightclub Fire" (2012). Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Faculty Publications. 1.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/pmr_facpub/1
Notes/Citation Information
Published on PLOS One, v. 7, issue.10, e47339.
© Schneider et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.