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Medicine, Conflict and Survival

ISSN: 1362-3699 (Print) 1743-9396 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fmcs20

Psychosocial effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster

Lynn Barnett

To cite this article: Lynn Barnett (2007) Psychosocial effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster , Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 23:1, 46-57, DOI: 10.1080/13623690601084591

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13623690601084591

Published online: 29 Jan 2007.

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Psychosocial effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster*

LYNN BARNETT

Clannaborough, Nr Crediton, Devon

Abstract The psychological factors surrounding the Chernobyl disaster include the sudden trauma of evacuation, long-term effects of being a refugee, disruption of social networks, illness, separation and its effects on families, children’s perception and effects on their development and the threat of a long-term consequence with an endless future. Added to this was the breakdown of the Soviet Union with consequent collapse of health services, increasing poverty and malnutrition. These complexities made necessary new individual and social treatment methods developed in UNESCO Community Centres, within which some positives have resulted, such as the development of individual and group self help and the professions of counselling, social work and community development, practices which did not previously exist in the Soviet Union.

Keywords: Chernobyl disaster, Child development, Psychosocial treatment, Radiation, Refugees, Trauma

The 26th of April 2006 was the twentieth anniversary of the explosion and

fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine. The resulting

radioactive fallout has been estimated as equivalent to that of 200 of the

nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was the beginning

of a catastrophe that continues to affect millions of people in many parts of

Europe but particularly the three countries closest to the reactor, Ukraine,

Belarus and Russia. The affected populations have had to cope with

ongoing political, social, environmental and health consequences, together

with conflicting findings and recommendations of scientists and other

experts who disagree about the exact repercussions of the accident, as

evidenced by both official and unofficial reports.

*This paper is based on a talk given at a MEDACT conference at the Royal College of Surgeons, London,

on 22 April 2006.

Medicine, Conflict and Survival

January – March 2007; 23(1): 46 – 57

ISSN 1362-3699 print/ISSN 1743-9396 online � 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13623690601084591

The author took part in a study tour of the Chernobyl complex and the

surrounding zones in 2004, organised by Friends of Chernobyl Centre, US

(FOCCUS); one of the main interests of the tour being visits to the

UNESCO Community Centres set up after the accident. The author and

some others in the group had taken part in the original social work and

counselling training courses for the staff of these centres, which were an

innovation in the Soviet Union at the time.

There have been many conflicting reports on the exact morbidity figures

following the Chernobyl disaster, but the issue is wider than that. A recent

edition of Nature quotes: ‘What we’d like people to take away is not the

numbers game (such as how many cancers or how many died) but a

recognition that Chernobyl’s most serious impact was on the mental health

of about seven million people labelled as victims of the accident’ [1]. In the

same edition of Nature, there is a call for ‘an international effort to monitor

all possible health consequences, using the studies of Japanese bomb

survivors as a model’, and:

in terms of public health, the psychological consequences of exposure to

the accident are probably more important than the physical conse-

quences . . . Millions were exposed to fallout; all must have some concern

for themselves and their children. For hundreds and thousands, fear of the

unknown was compounded by forced evacuation and loss of trust in

government, caused by poor risk communication . . . heightened by mis-

managed responses to the accident. At the time, the Soviet nuclear industry

and government failed to alert the public to take safety precautions [2].

Trauma

The severity of these stress factors mentioned above depends in part on the

proximity to the disaster and which of the four zones people lived in. The

population in the exclusion zone 1, which incorporates Pripyat, the nearest

city to the reactor, were the most seriously affected (135,000), but also

seriously affected were those living in the less contaminated zone 2, where

whole villages were pulled down and buried and 160,000 people from 170

settlements were evacuated. Those in zones 3 and 4 – 3.5 million people

including 1.2 million children – were not evacuated, but their land was still

contaminated and they have had to live in fear of the health consequences.

The following factors all need to be considered in context when assessing

mental health or psychosocial effects, which adds to the enormous difficulty

of assessment:

. knowledge of the accident and fear of the unknown consequences;

. forced and sudden evacuation with loss of personal possessions, home and employment;

Psychosocial effects of Chernobyl 47

. disruption of stable social networks with evacuation to villages or towns where new arrivals were often met with hostility and discrimination

from existing residents and in light of this there was often a struggle for

residency permits;

. unemployment;

. increasing poverty and ill-health; collapse of the health services because of the breakdown of the Soviet Union;

. confusion about what food is safe to eat – what animals and plants – sometimes leading to malnutrition;

. birth defects or their possibility;

. the promise of benefits which, even though minimal, often did not materialise.

If we consider the nature of trauma, we can say that many of these

stressors alone can lead to symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

(PTSD). In this disorder the breakdown of ‘normal’ social and economic

structures can contribute as much to the impact and subsequent distress as

the particular catastrophic events.

When a person experiences overwhelming stress, there occurs a natural

biphasic response which alternates between the avoidant phase (numbing,

withdrawal and denial) and the intrusive phase (recalling the event with

extreme affect, traumatic re-experiencing of the event and generalised

hyper-reactivity). These symptoms continue until the person can master the

experience.

Technological traumas are, however, experienced very differently from

other types of stressful situations. The inescapability, fear and extremely

horrifying sudden sensory overload may not be present. The traumatic

stressor could be no more than horrifying information, but this can be as

threatening although in a different way. Also delayed PTSD can occur

when the perception of the event changes, creating a re-definition and re-

experience of it as traumatogenic. This occurred with some of the

‘liquidators’, the soldiers, scientists and others sent to clear up after the

accident, who only later realised the danger to which they had been exposed

or into which they had sent others [3]. In addition, what is perceived and

experienced as horrifying, life-threatening and overwhelming by one person

may not be experienced in the same way by another.

We know from many follow-up studies that time alone does not always

heal. Studies carried out after the Second World War, the Gulf and

Yugoslavian Wars, show that children were still suffering PTSD years later

[4]; the Aberfan coal tip catastrophe where 29 per cent of the children still

had PTSD 33 years later [5]; the sinking of the Jupiter, where a seven-year

follow-up showed that 15 per cent of children still met the criteria for

PTSD [6]. Thus, people suffering from stress caused by trauma need help,

not necessarily psychiatric help, but the kinds of help that support natural

48 L. Barnett

healing processes and coping strategies. ‘In large scale disasters, stress

reactions are complicated by bereavement and depression. All the reactions

need to be properly assessed and treated, not only the few given recognition

by DSM’ (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric

Association) [6].

On the other hand the Chernobyl disaster was not only a technological

but a manmade catastrophe, and manmade catastrophes generally have a

more severe and more protracted psychological toll compared with natural

disasters [7]. Not only this but Chernobyl was a very different kind of

trauma, of cumulative stressors without a foreseeable end. A different

perspective on management and treatment of the traumas resulting from

technological and manmade disasters is needed.

A single stressor, such as a car accident, can lead to what is called ‘type 1’

trauma; multiple stressors such as occur in war are called ‘type 2’ trauma,

so perhaps trauma arising from disasters with no end in sight needs to be

recognised as ‘type 3’. Studies of the mental effects of cumulative trauma

suggest that repeated adversity may lead to symptoms and characterologic

distortions [8], and that there is a threshold for resistance to injury which, if

breached, will lead to a decline in functioning even in those who had

strength and resilience early in life.

A new branch of psychiatry has been proposed, Ecological Psychiatry,

being the study of mental disorders and mental health care after

environmental catastrophe [9], whilst others have suggested a category of

Sociostress Disorder, SSD, which does not fit into the current standard

psychiatric classifications [10]. It is suggested that SSD alters not just an

individual’s but a population’s functional abilities with variants including

psycho-physiological reactions, psychogenic adaptive reactions, neurotic

states, neurotic personality development and acute reactions to the

situation.

The debate about the evolution of posttraumatic morbidity has been

concerned about whether it is the objective severity of stressor or

premorbid vulnerability that predominates. But for a full understanding,

we must take account of the social, and societal, context in which

personal distress or disorder is being played out and with which it is

interacting’ [11].

Researchers in South Africa [12] and earlier in Auschwitz [13] found that

those who understood, in political terms, what had happened to them could

better survive. The secrecy and lies that enshrouded the Chernobyl

accident led to an almost total lack of knowledge about the facts, political or

otherwise, leading to the impossibility of any kind of personal control.

The unseen, unheard, unfelt and unsmelt terror was too difficult for

people to fight against or even, sometimes, to be afraid of. People made up

Psychosocial effects of Chernobyl 49

their own stories and myths about what had happened and how to deal with

it, studies showing that the myths divided into categories of optimistic/

pessimistic, active/passive and myths of chance (fate) [14]. An optimistic

myth was that small doses of radiation are useful for people of middle and

old age; a pessimistic myth was that only concrete can protect a person from

radiation and therefore all will die. Each myth is linked with either active or

passive behaviour, and the researchers see passivity and dependency as ‘one

of the most acute problems for communities and perhaps for society as a

whole’ [14: 174].

In these studies the material losses caused by the disaster were not

important components in a person’s psychological evaluation of the

situation; ways of coping often had a ‘magical’ element. It was found, for

example, that even 15 years later 90 per cent of the population was vague

about the nature of radiation, and some believed that drinking red wine or

swabbing throats with antiseptic iodine or using detergent rather than soap

was a protection against it.

Individuals under severe threat also process information differently.

Those who work with trauma victims report that their focus of attention

narrows to that which is causing the fear and a possible means of escape.

Later, if the fear state is re-triggered the mental states present at the time of

the trauma return. There is a tendency for those whose beliefs are based on

alarming experiences to retain and continue to collect information that

confirms their beliefs, discarding all else. In other words it is hard to change

attitudes. In the Chernobyl situation, escape was almost impossible, for

even after leaving the country the fear remains. Further, because of the early

lack of information and the lies and delays in receiving help, people became

very untrusting of later information even when it was true. This lack of trust

in information increases stress levels, as does the constant re-arousal of

emotions due to conflicting and/or constant information released over the

years, as new studies and research are published. Some manage this by

avoidance, others just despair.

For example at one point the UNESCO Centres, and some other

accessible places, were provided with Geiger counters so people could

measure the radioactivity of food they produced, bought or collected from

the forests. So much food was contaminated, however, that many gave up

measuring as they felt that otherwise they would not be able to feed their

families. It also interfered with traditional rituals such as gathering spring

mushrooms, which had been carried out for generations, so people went on

gathering them, despite the danger.

One woman (with thyroid problems) is reported as saying:

as the rules increased I began to see that it was impossible to do

everything they said. How could I keep the cat from coming in and out?

How could I live in a room where I never opened the windows? It was too

hard and I gave up and stopped listening . . . Now I don’t even react when

50 L. Barnett

I hear the news every spring about Chernobyl exploding again. There is

nothing I can do [3: 39].

Studies on stress and health

Studies over the past 20 years on the psychological effects of Chernobyl

have shown that depressive symptoms, anxiety, PTSD and unexplained

physical symptoms were two to four times higher in Chernobyl-exposed

populations compared with controls, although these symptoms rarely met

the level of criteria for a psychiatric disorder. Significant symptoms were

found up to 11 years after the accident, and the findings are consistent with

mental health patterns occurring after other toxic events, such as the atomic

bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Three Mile Island accident and

Bhopal [15].

Ukrainian researchers have reported EEG changes, schizophrenia,

dementia, cognitive impairments and organic brain disorders in ‘liquida-

tors’, but alcoholism and other contributory factors were not always

evaluated. Many of the liquidators were army conscripts or inmates of

prisons, and many of those who lived were not followed up so the rates are

possibly much higher. It has also been suggested that ionising radiation

makes people hyper-sensitive to even the smallest environmental stressor

and accelerates the aging process [16].

It has been reported that the wives of the liquidators, and of other men

living in the contaminated areas, were afraid to sleep with their husbands in

case of having deformed children, so higher divorce or separation rates

became another consequence of the accident [17]. Many parents who had

to look after sick children either at home or in hospital also had marriage

difficulties as a result of the stress, one reason described as being the need

to ascribe blame. A further consequence is that many more children have

been admitted to orphanages either because of their illness, with which

parents can no longer cope, or because of poverty, including widowhood

caused by the accident, or fear [18].

A further factor causing severe stress in the Chernobyl situation is the

feeling of social alienation that can follow toxic contamination. A person

can view themselves as a freak or be so viewed, or even avoided, by others.

This occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki where irradiated people were

given the title of hibakusha. Contamination may also render their house,

land or workplace uninhabitable, not only shattering networks and

communities but also leading to a loss of role, sense of self and expectations

for the future.

The confusion, grief and inability of people to leave their contaminated

homes and possessions continues to be a terrible problem following

Chernobyl. People could not understand why they were forbidden to take

Psychosocial effects of Chernobyl 51

family treasures with them, or why the family cat, dog or livestock were to

be shot and buried. Some refused to leave their homes, running to hide

from the militias whose job it was to evacuate entire communities and

others returned illegally to live in contaminated areas. Many evacuees

were stunned to learn that after they left their entire villages were

bulldozed and buried beneath the soil [3: 37].

Children

Studies carried out in various European countries in the 1980s, during the

cold war when there was a danger of nuclear war, sheds some light on the

way children under ten years old react to nuclear issues, both power and

weapons, and particularly radiation [19]. Previous studies had shown that

adolescents were extremely worried about their futures. In the younger

age group it was found that the two issues, nuclear power and weapons,

were closely related in their minds. Talking about these matters raised

personal fears of death of parents and fears about their own aggression. It

was hard for the children to describe radiation because of its invisibility,

lack of smell, and feel. Some thought it was like acid rain, or acid, which

‘seeps through most substances, including metals’. They knew it polluted

the sea and fish and the air and birds. They said, ‘it contaminates, like

germs; it can get into your food, on your hands and so into your

body . . . it is like gas, invisible, but it can kill people by choking them or

poisoning them’.

The children, although anxious about things they heard on the news,

protected their parents by not telling them about their fears, and they would

‘change the subject’ if it came up. They coped by ‘trying not to think about

it’ (the boys in particular), or engaged in escape fantasies; one boy said he

would ‘go to the moon – there are no nuclear weapons there’, to which a

girl added, ‘Yes, and we could take bottles of gas’ [20].

Similar mental processes are likely to have occurred in the Chernobyl

young children, particularly as parents were highly stressed, which the

children would have picked up. In a UNESCO Community centre in the

first zone of radiation monitoring, the staff were worried that although

radiation levels had decreased, the anxiety of the children was getting

worse. A subsequent survey of children aged 12–14 years showed that

the children born after the accident had the most frightening

picture. Comments made included ‘Chernobyl is terrible, it affects the

fate of people’; ‘Chernobyl is what our parents are mostly worried about –

it affects the whole planet’; ‘ Chernobyl is my disease’; ‘Chernobyl is for

ever’.

Thyroid cancer is known to be a significant effect of the Chernobyl

accident, and one study reports a high level of psychiatric disorder in

children with cancer of the thyroid gland, with the rate of neurotic disorders

52 L. Barnett

twice as high in girls and of PTSD four times higher in girls [21]. One of the

compounding problems with ill children in the Ukraine is that they have to

be sent away from home for treatment as hospitals are so centralised. This

makes any medical interventions more traumatic, particularly if parents are

absent.

Several factors have been suggested which protect a child from the

detrimental effects of trauma, loss and change, but it can be seen from the

previous discussion that children in the Chernobyl situation are at extreme

risk.

. Being able to integrate the event into a meaning system (is there any meaning to Chernobyl?).

. Gaining active mastery over traumatic events, either consciously or unconsciously (this may involve the internalisation of bizarre experi-

ences and feelings and needs help).

. Being able to use natural healing processes such as play, dreams and mourning to create a narrative, that is, something that makes sense.

(This is one of the major activities in the UNESCO centres’ trauma

work).

. Finding culturally syntonic forms of expression of loss and of celebrating life, for example, recognising the gains of life after

evacuation. (Child evacuees had better housing sometimes, but suffered

the loss of school, friends and social networks. Again, this is something

worked on in the UNESCO Centres.)

. Having a parent (or substitute parent) who is able to contain one’s anxiety. (Most commonly parents were themselves too anxious to

contain their own fears and anxieties let alone their children’s anxiety,

and parents became hypervigilant and over reactive.)

. Having access to one’s community and social network. (Those displaced had neither. Those from highly contaminated areas such as

Pripyat will never again be able to return.)

We know from Attachment Theory [22] that events which threaten a

child’s sense of physical safety and the security of their tie to parents,

adversely affects their development. A longitudinal study of over 30

years duration [23] carried out in New York, on the relationship

between mothering in infancy and childhood trauma occurring after

infancy but before the age of 18 years, found that children experiencing

two or more adverse circumstances had significantly lower levels of

overall functioning as adults than those spared multiple traumas.

Further, those adults who had received more effective care in infancy

in terms of maternal empathy, consistency, control, thoughtfulness,

affection and management of aggression, had higher-level psychological

defence mechanisms than those who, as children, received less effective

parenting.

Psychosocial effects of Chernobyl 53

There are obvious implications for Chernobyl children whose mothers

were so preoccupied and whose empathy, as a consequence, was interfered

with.

Infants

‘For years officials were not allowed to label illnesses as Chernobyl

related so it is unclear yet whether or not birth defects are on the rise in

the region’ [3: 41]. Yet there are reports from studies of Chernobyl that

radionuclide induced psychoneurotic symptomatology takes place at all

periods of inter-uterine development, the period of late cerebrogenesis

(brain formation) being the most sensitive to radiation, leading to

disorders of speech and cognitive skills, lower IQ and emotional

disorders; and that infants who were in utero at the time of the accident

have cognitive impairments, depending on their stage of development

[24,25].

These findings are disputed by some researcher groups, including the

World Health Organization, and with some authors suggesting that in many

of the local studies, medical professionals did not have training in

psychosomatic medicine and therefore were unused to identifying and

managing psychological problems, neither were they trained in epidemiol-

ogy and social science research methods [15]. This makes interpreting

results of studies quite difficult and accounts for some of the disputes

between local and foreign studies. Whatever the truth, pregnancy and birth,

at the time of the accident until the present, is certainly a stressor for

parents who, even after an apparently normal delivery, still wait anxiously to

see what might develop in their children or grandchildren. As a Chernobyl

victim recalls:

Chernobyl will never be a joking matter for me. After the explosion, there

was a holiday. It was a very warm and sunny day. At that time we did not

know there was danger. My daughter was pregnant. She went to the beach

of the river in Kiev and sunbathed the entire day. This was probably the

worst exposure she could have had. For now her son is okay, but as we see

more and more cases of thyroid cancer in children from that time period,

we worry about her son and what his health will be [3: 15].

We know from much research that maternal stress has effects on the growth

of the foetus.

Information was received in small doses, sometimes with much delay

following the accident, and in fragmentary and contradictory ways. Because

information is applied personally, the acute phase of the disaster may occur

in a highly personal way much later, as the toxic contamination is revealed

in people’s own lives. For example a father’s concerns about his boy born in

Ukraine at the time of the accident: the family had moved to Russia and

54 L. Barnett

then America, but months later they noticed the boy had a lump on his

thyroid. ‘I thought we were through with these things. We live in America

now, it’s in our past, but here it comes to us again. I haven’t slept for weeks

I’ve been so sick with worry’ [3: 16].

Further difficulties arise from the way stress and anxiety can interfere

with relationships. This has already been discussed in terms of marital

relationships and children’s development, but it is also vital to understand

its impact on maternal–infant relationships, which are the building blocks of

healthy personality development, resilience and emotional security.

Trauma and unresolved grief have been described as blocking the

integration of left and right hemisphere activity, which is necessary to

experience complex dyadic states, the essential ‘attuned communication’

between an infant and its mother. Mothers experiencing trauma may thus

be less able to take part in the complex process of attachment essential for

healthy infant development.

Thus child development at all stages has been interfered with by the

traumas resulting from the Chernobyl disaster, but many who have assessed

the aftermath have not taken this into consideration. Much of the effects, of

course, are difficult to ‘measure’ but this does not mean it cannot be done

or that they are inconsequential.

Conclusion

Generalising about the psychosocial factors resulting from the Chernobyl

disaster is a difficult task because of the different types of risk involved:

liquidators from 1986 to 1990; evacuated people from Pripyat and the

30 km zone; settlers from evacuated areas, either forced or voluntary;

people still residing in contaminated areas and children of different ages

born from all these groups and at different periods of contamination. All

had different experiences and degrees of radiation exposure. It is also

difficult because different people react to trauma and stress in different

ways and because information is collected in different ways.

Some of the coping and non-coping mechanisms have been outlined:

defensive blocking out of problems or denial, repression, depression,

magical thinking, drugs, alcohol and suicide; generalised mistrust of the

government and officials; victimization and learned helplessness and

illnesses of many kinds, both physical and mental.

For some children even ordinary life events such as first going to

school, moving house or birth of a sibling, involve significant stress. They

are all factors which interrupt ‘the architecture of every day life’ [26].

Imagine then, the appalling and continuing stress the Chernobyl children

and their parents have suffered and are still suffering. Is it any wonder

that the degree of physical and mental illness caused by the psychosocial

stress factors discussed is high, quite apart from the medical effects of

radiation?

Psychosocial effects of Chernobyl 55

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( Accepted 10 July 2006)

Lynn Barnett originally trained as a psychologist and social worker then later as an anthropologist and child, adolescent and adult psychotherapist. She has consulted to workers with traumatised children in Russia, Kazakstan, Former Yugoslavia, China and UK. She recently retired from the NHS to devote more time to her video series of cross cultural child development.

Correspondence: Lammacott Cottage, Clannaborough, Nr Crediton, Devon EX17 6DA; email: [email protected].

Psychosocial effects of Chernobyl 57