Citation

Abba-Aji M, Moreland A, Abdalla SM, Rancher C, Galea S, Davies F, Kilpatrick DG. JAMA Netw. Open 2024; 7(3): e242739.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, American Medical Association)

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.2739

PMID

38502130

Abstract

On October 1, 2017, a lone gunman shot and killed 60 people and injured 867 others at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, making this mass shooting the deadliest in US history.1 Witnesses and survivors of mass violence incidents (MVIs) often experience depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).2 However, the psychological sequelae and associated factors among witnesses and survivors of the Las Vegas MVI have yet to be examined. In this study, we documented the prevalence and risk factors of major depressive episode (MDE) and PTSD among witnesses and survivors of the Las Vegas MVI using 2021 data, 4 years after the incident. ...

Of the 1000 adults randomly selected from the list, 202 responded to the recruiter and 177 eligible participants completed the survey (response rate 17.7%). Participants included 132 females (74.6%) and 45 males (25.4%), with a mean (SD) age of 43.5 (12.5) years. Of these respondents, 58 (32.8%) were physically injured during the MVI and 88 (49.7%) reported having low social support. Sociodemographic characteristics of participants are reported in Table 1.

Eighty-seven participants (49.2%) reported past-year MDEs, while 112 (63.3%) reported past-year PTSD. Those physically injured during the MVI had a 36% higher risk of past-year MDE (adjusted risk ratio [aRR], 1.36; 95% CI, 1.01-1.84) and 32% higher risk of past-year PTSD (aRR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.06-1.64) compared with those who were not injured. Adequate social support was associated with reduced the risk of both past-year MDE (aRR, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.35-0.74) and PTSD (aRR, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.48-0.82). Table 2 provides results of the regression analyses. ...

Language: en

Keywords

*Mass Shooting Events; *Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/epidemiology/etiology; Depression/epidemiology; Humans; Prevalence; Risk Factors