BACKGROUND: The mental health burden from fear of future terrorism has not been given much research attention compared to the immediate mental distress such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Such neglected ongoing mental health morbidity associated with threats of terrorism had been described as pre-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS).
OBJECTIVE: The study highlighted this phenomenon (PTSS) in Nigeria by examining the catastrophic burden of the fear of future terrorism and associated psychiatric burden among adult population in Kaduna city.
METHOD: Participants were students and staff of Kaduna State University (KASU), Kaduna Polytechnic, and students awaiting admission into Kaduna State University. They responded to the following instruments after obtaining their informed consents: a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Terrorism Catastrophising Scale (TCS), and the depression and Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) portion of Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI).
RESULTS: The TCS showed that 78.8% of the participants had from moderate to severe clinical distress on fear of terrorism. The TCS has a Cronbach's alpha of 0.721 and also had significant moderate correlation with depression (r=0.278; p<0.01) and GAD (r=0.201; p<0.01) scales of MINI.
CONCLUSION: The study illustrated that the mental health burden from the fear of terrorism was high and this was relatively related to depression and GAD. This highlighted the need for ongoing monitoring and called for their effective prevention from the identified underlying cognitive mechanisms.