Anxiety and Sleep Quality of Adolescents in Earthquake Affected and Non-Affected Areas

The district of Pidie Jaya was severely hit by the earthquake on December 7, 2016. The disaster can cause various psychological problems, including anxiety and sleep quality of the survivors. The present study aims to determine the presence of anxiety and sleep problem among adolescents exposed to the earthquake and compared them to those who were not exposed to the earthquake. The presence of anxiety was assessed using the S-TAI questionnaire, while sleep quality was assessed using the PSQI questionnaire. The findings suggest that adolescents who were directly affected by the earthquake, the prevalence of state-anxiety was 85.4% and 1.7% of moderate and severe, respectively. Whereas the prevalence of trait-anxiety was 84.3% and 2.2% of moderate and severe, respectively. Among adolescents who were not directly affected by the earthquake, the prevalence was 58.2% and 2.4% of moderate and severe state-anxiety, respectively. The prevalence of sleep problem was found more frequent among non-earthquake affected adolescents (87.3%) than among those directly affected by the earthquake (73.6%) (2= 10.1, ρ = 0.002). The findings suggest that the presence of anxiety among adolescents affected by the earthquake were more prevalent compared to those who did not experience such disaster.