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Claim analyzed
Health“A 2025 study by Yılmazer found that natural catastrophes significantly increase psychological distress, including anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms, among affected individuals.”
The conclusion
Yılmazer's 2025 research does document substantial psychological distress — including anxiety and near-threshold PTSD symptoms, with 31% meeting probable PTSD criteria — among survivors of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes. However, the claim overgeneralizes by attributing findings about one earthquake to "natural catastrophes" broadly, and the cross-sectional study design lacks a pre-disaster baseline, meaning it documents distress levels rather than formally demonstrating a "significant increase." The broader disaster-mental-health literature strongly supports the directional conclusion.
Based on 11 sources: 10 supporting, 0 refuting, 1 neutral.
Caveats
- Yılmazer's 2025 study focused specifically on survivors of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, not natural catastrophes as a general category — the claim overgeneralizes the study's scope.
- The study used a cross-sectional design with no pre-disaster baseline or control group, so the phrase 'significantly increase' implies a comparative finding the study design cannot independently establish.
- While the broader peer-reviewed literature strongly supports the link between natural disasters and elevated psychological distress, attributing that broad conclusion solely to Yılmazer's study misrepresents its specific contribution.
This analysis is for informational purposes only and does not constitute health or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health-related decisions.
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Sources
Sources used in the analysis
This study, authored by Eda Yılmazer, examined levels of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress symptoms, well-being, and resilience among 642 adult survivors of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes. Data collected between September 2024 and January 2025 revealed that survivors reported moderate depression (M = 22.1), mild-moderate anxiety (M = 19.4), and near-threshold PTSD symptoms (M = 40.0), with 31.0% exceeding the cut-off for probable PTSD. The conclusion highlights that nearly 2 years after the earthquakes, survivors experienced substantial psychological distress alongside reduced well-being and resilience.
This systematic review and meta-analysis, co-authored by Eda Yılmazer, found that 18 months after the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, Turkish adult survivors continued to experience high levels of probable PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Reported PTSD rates ranged from 29 to 54%, and depression and anxiety were widespread, with up to 40% screening positive for depression and 40-50% reporting moderate-to-severe anxiety symptoms.
This August 2025 article highlights that earthquakes can have a substantial impact on communities, leading to adverse psychological effects on survivors, including sleep disturbances, emotional distress, depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is particularly common among disaster survivors, with prevalence rates varying between 4.10% and 67.07% in studies.
Natural disasters can leave a lasting impact on individuals, families, and entire communities, with mental health effects ranging from short-term stress to long-term challenges. Short-term psychological effects may include shock, fear, confusion, helplessness, uncertainty, trouble sleeping, difficulty focusing, and increased anxiety. Long-term effects can include chronic anxiety, depression, PTSD, or grief.
This year, the theme for World Mental Health Day is 'access to services – mental health in catastrophes and emergencies'. Last year, PLOS Mental Health published a study, which explored the mental health of pregnant women who experienced climate disasters. Researchers from North Carolina State University, Emory University, and Georgia State University examined data from hundreds of thousands of pregnant women who were specifically exposed to one or more hurricanes. They found that the risk for mood and anxiety disorders was elevated by cumulative hurricane exposure (two or more storms).
A February 2025 publication from the National Center for PTSD notes that almost everyone will experience stress reactions after disaster events, and while these reactions decrease for most, some individuals may experience longer-term or severe responses. The most common mental health diagnoses reported in research samples are posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety.
The WHO Kobe Centre highlights that while the frequency and severity of natural disasters have increased, the long-term psychosocial impact and needs of survivors during the recovery phase have not been well documented, emphasizing the need for more scientific evidence in this area. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2025 also underscores the fundamental role of health in disaster risk management.
For World Mental Health Day 2025, the theme highlights mental health in humanitarian emergencies, stating that 1 in 5 people living through such crises will experience a mental health condition. During and after these crises, people often experience acute stress, anxiety, panic, grief, loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, and hopelessness.
Research suggests that anywhere from one third to one half of those exposed to disasters could develop mental distress such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, or anxiety disorders. While most survivors recover from mental and behavioral health impacts within weeks, some may have symptoms months and even years after the disaster.
A review article published in the International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology in September 2025 states that natural disasters are a global health issue causing severe mental health disorders, including trauma and stress-related disorders, acute stress disorders, adjustment disorders, prolonged grief disorder, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, panic disorder, and substance use disorder among survivors.
On World Mental Health Day 2025, attention is drawn to the mental distress faced by people affected by emergencies and conflicts. Crises such as natural disasters, conflicts and public health emergencies cause emotional distress with one in five individuals experiencing a mental health condition. According to the World Health Organization, 1 in five people about 22% who have experienced war or conflict in the previous 10 years has depression anxiety post-traumatic stress disorder bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
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Expert review
How each expert evaluated the evidence and arguments
Expert 1 — The Logic Examiner
Source 1 shows that earthquake survivors assessed in 2024–2025 had substantial anxiety and near-threshold PTSD symptoms, and Source 2 corroborates high PTSD/anxiety/depression prevalence after the same earthquake, but neither provides a baseline/control comparison or pre–post design that would logically justify the causal/contrastive wording “significantly increase” (i.e., an increase relative to what would otherwise be expected). Therefore, while it is well-supported that Yılmazer's 2025 work found high distress among disaster-affected individuals, the claim overreaches by asserting a demonstrated significant increase attributable to “natural catastrophes” broadly rather than documenting elevated symptom burden in a specific exposed cohort.
Expert 2 — The Context Analyst
The claim attributes to Yılmazer a finding about "natural catastrophes" broadly, but Sources 1 and 2 show that Yılmazer's 2025 work focused specifically on survivors of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes — a single seismic event — not natural catastrophes as a general category; additionally, the cross-sectional design (Source 1) lacks a pre-disaster baseline or control group, meaning it documents distress levels rather than demonstrating a statistically significant "increase" relative to a counterfactual. That said, the broader claim that natural catastrophes elevate psychological distress including anxiety and PTSD symptoms is overwhelmingly supported by the wider literature (Sources 3–11, including WHO, National Center for PTSD, and multiple peer-reviewed reviews), and Yılmazer's findings are consistent with this well-established consensus, so the core substance of the claim is true even if the framing overgeneralizes the scope of Yılmazer's specific study and implies a causal/comparative design that was not used.
Expert 3 — The Source Auditor
The most authoritative sources in this pool are Sources 1 and 2 (both PubMed, high-authority peer-reviewed medical database entries), which directly document Yılmazer's 2025 research: Source 1 is a multi-site cross-sectional study of 642 earthquake survivors showing substantial anxiety, near-threshold PTSD, and 31% probable PTSD rates, while Source 2 is a systematic review and meta-analysis co-authored by Yılmazer confirming persistently high PTSD (29–54%), depression, and anxiety rates among the same disaster-affected population; Source 3 (PMC, high-authority) and Source 6 (VA National Center for PTSD, a .gov resource) further corroborate that natural disasters broadly elevate anxiety and PTSD symptoms. The claim is substantively confirmed by these high-authority sources — Yılmazer's 2025 work does find that a natural catastrophe (the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes) is associated with significant psychological distress including anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms — though the opponent correctly notes that Source 1's cross-sectional design lacks a pre-disaster baseline, meaning "significantly increase" is an inferential rather than experimentally demonstrated conclusion; however, the broader literature (Sources 2, 3, 6) and Yılmazer's own meta-analysis strongly support this inference, making the claim Mostly True rather than False, with the only meaningful caveat being the scope limitation (one earthquake event, not all natural catastrophes) and the absence of a control group in the primary study.
Expert summary
The arguments
Two AI advocates debated this claim using the research gathered.
Argument for
The 2025 multi-site cross-sectional study authored by Eda Yılmazer on survivors of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes documents substantial psychological distress in the disaster-affected population, including mild–moderate anxiety, near-threshold PTSD symptoms, and 31% meeting the cut-off for probable PTSD nearly two years post-catastrophe (Source 1, PubMed: “Psychological distress, resilience, and well-being among survivors…”). This finding is reinforced by Yılmazer's 2025 systematic review/meta-analysis showing persistently high rates of probable PTSD, depression, and anxiety among earthquake survivors, aligning with broader disaster-mental-health evidence that natural catastrophes commonly elevate anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms (Source 2, PubMed; Source 6, National Center for PTSD).
Your argument conflates documenting distress levels in a single affected population with demonstrating that catastrophes "significantly increase" distress, since Source 1 is a cross-sectional study with no baseline or control group — meaning it cannot establish that distress was elevated relative to pre-disaster levels, only that it exists, which is a critical logical leap you fail to address. Furthermore, your appeal to Source 2's meta-analysis still concerns only earthquake survivors, not natural catastrophes broadly, and you conveniently ignore Source 7's explicit acknowledgment from the WHO Kobe Centre that long-term psychosocial impacts "have not been well documented," which directly undermines the sweeping generalization embedded in the claim you are defending.
Argument against
The claim asserts that Yılmazer's 2025 study found natural catastrophes "significantly increase" psychological distress, but Source 1 — the actual Yılmazer study — focused exclusively on survivors of a single specific event (the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes), not natural catastrophes broadly, and its findings of "moderate" depression and "mild-moderate" anxiety scores do not constitute a demonstration that catastrophes significantly increase distress relative to a baseline or control group, as no such comparative design is described. Furthermore, Source 7 from the WHO Kobe Centre explicitly acknowledges that "the long-term psychosocial impact and needs of survivors during the recovery phase have not been well documented," directly undermining the sweeping generalization in the claim that natural catastrophes as a category significantly increase psychological distress.
You're treating “significantly increase” as if it requires a baseline-controlled causal design, but the claim only says Yılmazer “found” elevated distress among disaster-affected people—and Source 1 (PubMed, Yılmazer's multi-site study of earthquake survivors) documents substantial anxiety and near-threshold PTSD with 31% probable PTSD nearly two years post-event, which is exactly the kind of catastrophe-linked increase the claim describes. And your reliance on Source 7 (WHO Kobe Centre) is a category error: it notes gaps in long-term documentation in Japan, not that disasters don't raise distress, and it doesn't negate the direct 2025 evidence from Yılmazer (Source 1) or the broader earthquake literature showing high PTSD/anxiety/depression after the same catastrophe (Source 2, PubMed).