About 3,400 elementary and junior high school students in Hyogo Prefecture are still suffering stress-induced disorders from the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, according to a survey by the prefectural board of education released this week.
The board found in its annual survey that 3,392 of the 490,000 public elementary and junior high school students in the prefecture still require special care for posttraumatic stress disorder.
PTSD symptoms include sleep disorders, depression and anxiety. The board has been conducting the survey since the 1996 school year to assess what provisions schools should make for helping students with PTSD.
The number of students with PTSD dropped by 713 from the 1999 academic year, partly because students entering elementary schools in the current school year were less than 1 year old when the quake occurred, according to the board.
The board, however, emphasized the need to continue offering special care to students experiencing PTSD.
Forty-two percent of PTSD-affected students blamed their stress on changes in their relationships with family members and friends after the quake, 39 percent cited stress from the terror of the quake and 38 percent from changes in housing conditions.
The quake, which devastated Kobe and surrounding areas on Jan. 17, 1995, killed 6,432 people. About 4,500 of them were residents of Kobe.
Altogether, 99 percent of the students suffering PTSD were from Kobe, Nishinomiya and eight other cities and 10 towns in the prefecture that were severely damaged in the quake, according to the survey.