Post-traumatic stress disorder, food insecurity, and social capital after the 2017 coastal El Niño flooding among mothers from Piura, Peru: A mixed method study

Abstract

In order to understand the impacts in the post-disaster scenario of the 2017 El Niño events in the Piura region-Peru, we examined post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), food insecurity (FI), and social capital (SC) across three-time points in mothers in highly affected areas. In the Piura, Castilla, and Catacaos districts, we studied mothers combining mixed-method assessments at three (June-July 2017), eight and 12 months after the flooding. Each outcome was measured with the PTSD-Checklist-Civilian (PCL-C), the Household-Food-Insecurity- Access-Scale (HFIAS), the Adapted-Social-Capital-Assessment-Tool (SASCAT) surveys. In-depth interviews at the first evaluation were also conducted. At the first evaluation, 38.1% (n = 21) of 179 mothers reported PTSD; eight months and one year after the flooding, it dropped to 1.9% and virtually zero, respectively. Severe FI also declined over time, from 90.0% three months after the flooding to 31.8% eight months after, to 13.1% one year after. Conversely, high-cognitive SC was increased three months after the flooding (42.1%) and much greater levels at eight and 12 months after (86.7% and 77.7%, respectively). High levels of PTSD and severe FI three months after the flooding consistently decreased to nearly zero one-year post-disaster. High levels of high-cognitive SC may have helped mothers to recover from PTSD and FI in Piura. © 2024 Culquichicón 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.