Anxiety in Mothers of Family After Natural Disaster in a Rural Community

Natural disasters are very often unexpected and can cause serious psychological anxiety, fear, sensation of uncertainty, or even panic effects on victim. For women from rural and poverty conditions, the anxiety can be a symptom which can obstruct ability to self regulate emotional reactions, or even to act properly into their family systems in these situations as the function they have in their families. The objectiveof this paper was to identify and describe anxiety response of mothers affected by the earthquake of 7.2 degrees in the Valley of Mexicali (rural zone)with the subbject of a total of 100 mothers from Mexicali’s Valley from the surrounding area of epicenter of the earthquake occurred in April 4 th 2010. Anxiety was measured by means of hypersensitivity, social concern and physiological anxiety by reporting a series of cognitive indicators using the Scale of Manifested Anxiety in Adults (AMAS‐A, initials in Spanish), and a self emotional‐ reactions report. The applied instrument showed that mothers in Mexicali’s Valley presented fear as the more frequent emotion (24%), followed by terror (10.9%) and scare(9.9%), a total of 34.2% reported to have had two or more emotional reactions during the event. The AMAS‐A questionnaire showed symptoms of clinically significant social concerning (n = 39, p = 0.50) and physiological anxiety. It can be concluded that the studied sample presented elevated symptoms of physiological anxiety, as well a second measured level of anxiety assessed was the social concern, and mothers in the rural region with low socio‐ economical resources present elevated signs of social concern after an earthquake.