Long-term study #4 of the Norwegian survivors from the capsized oil rig in the North Sea, The "Alexander L Kielland"-Disaster

This will be the fourth study of the Norwegian survivors from the “Alexander L Kielland”-disaster. The study will draw data from prior studies with regards to disaster exposure, psychiatric symptoms, personality and childhood as well as health insurance d ata. Participants are survivors from the “Alexander L Kielland” oil rig disaster, and controls from the same oil fields; they were matched for age, gender, and domicile. The survivors have previously been studied by interviews and/or questionnaires in 1 980, 1981, 1985. The controls in only in 1985. Self-administered symptom measures used in all prior studies will be repeated: IES-The impact of Event Scale, GHQ- General Health Questionnaire, PTSS-12. The study will allow cross-sectional comparisons be tween survivors and controls 25 years after the disaster with regards to mental and physical symptoms, health, work and marital status. Longitudinal studies: Repeated symptoms measures will make it possible to discriminate between various post-traumatic trajectories within a time frame of 25 years. Current and past diagnoses will be detected by using the SCID interviews. Explanatory variables based on past studies and trajectories will be used to explain the outcome with regards to diagnoses and symptoma tology. There have been speculations about post-traumatic stress disorder being a kind of transitional psychopathology, which finally ends up in traditional psychiatric diagnoses. This study may address this issue. Dates and disability rates will be us ed to explore the survival curves and explanatory factors of outcome. Kaplan-Meyer and Cox analyses will be employed. Possible genetic differences will be explored between survivors with high and low post-traumatic symptom loads.