PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (January 7, 2020) – A Prairie View A&M University assistant professor has been conducting research focusing on adjustment after natural disasters. One study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders suggests depressive symptoms may lead to higher future symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“We knew already before conducting this study that after a natural disaster, people may experience symptoms of depression, such as feeling sad and losing interest, or PTSD, such as having repeated unwanted thoughts about the event, being super alert, and difficulty concentrating or sleeping. But we really didn’t know how these two symptoms interact together,” said Dr. Yuki Shigemoto, assistant professor of psychology at PVAMU’s College of Juvenile Justice. “In other words, does depression lead to increased PTSD in the future, or do the PTSD symptoms lead to higher depression, or do they interact simultaneously?”

Shigemoto defined what he thinks is the most critical finding in the study.

“I tested using data from Hurricane Ike. What I found was only depressive symptoms were associated with higher PTSD symptoms in the future but not the other way around,” he said.  “So, people with depressive symptoms may be at risk of experiencing higher PTSD symptoms in the future. For clinicians, this may suggest they treat depressive symptoms first to prevent future PTSD symptoms from increasing.”

Shigemoto shared his interest in conducting studies on adjustment after natural disasters.

“A traumatic event could happen to us anytime during our lifetime – especially coming from Japan, which is where I’m originally from, there are a lot of natural disasters,” Shigemoto said. “When I was little, experiencing how people suffered after earthquakes shaped me in wanting to know more about how I could support people and survivors of natural disasters.”

Shigemoto worked on the study with PVAMU clinical adolescent psychology doctoral students Amanda Banks and Bridgett Boxley.

“In another research with graduate students, we collected data among survivors of Hurricane Harvey, and we published a paper.”

Those findings were published in the Journal of Community Psychology.

“For Hurricane Ike, I got the data from a publicly available data set,” Shigemoto explained. “So that’s why we had access to it. But, because this was secondary data, we weren’t able to look at some of the things we were really interested in.  So, we collected our own data with survivors of Hurricane Harvey.”

Shigemoto said although the data from Hurricane Ike only allowed him to examine up to 15 months, the data from Hurricane Harvey may suggest that survivor’s struggles may continue after 15 months.

“It has been over two years since Harvey, and the current study raises the importance for individuals who were affected by a natural disaster to be mindful of their mental health. Based on our data, strikingly approximately 80-percent were at risk for provisional diagnosis of PTSD,” said Shigemoto. These findings are published in Traumatology, which is published by the American Psychological Association

Shigemoto came to PVAMU to teach two years ago and hit the ground running doing research.

“These studies were something I wanted to do with graduate students here. These students are our future psychologists and researchers, so we hope there are more research opportunities and funding to conduct these important studies.”

To view the articles published by Shigemoto and his students in the Journal of Community Psychology, visit https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jcop.22287. To view Shigemoto’s solo study, visit https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032719300886 and https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Ftrm0000231.

Shigemoto, Banks, and Boxley are writing another manuscript on Hurricane Harvey, which Shigemoto hopes to be published this year.

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By Sammy G. Allen