A Retrospective Study on Evacuation and Long-Term Displacement Among Home-Visit Psychiatric Nursing Service Users in the Aftermath of the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake

The aim of this retrospective study was to identify the influencing factors of prolonged evacuation among home-visit psychiatric nursing services patients affected by the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake. We examined the associations between demographic factors, mental illness-related factors, living environment factors, and evacuation status. We also visualized evacuation routes using a geographic information system and analyzed their characteristics. We used data from medical records of patients using a single home-visit psychiatric nursing provider in northern Noto, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, an area severely affected by the 2024 earthquake. The study population comprised 115 patients with a mean (standard deviation) age of 53.3 (16.8) years; 64 (55.7%) were women and 51 (44.3%) were men. The median (interquartile range) total number of evacuation days was 208 (192–213) days, and the median (interquartile range) length of stay at the initial shelter was 2.0 (2.0–3.0) days. Binomial logistic regression analysis, adjusted for sex and age, showed that factors associated with prolonged evacuation were an initial shelter stay of <23 days (odds ratio: 3.26, 95% confidence interval: 1.15–9.26; p = 0.026) and the initial shelter being a public shelter (odds ratio: 4.56, 95% confidence interval: 1.49–13.95; p = 0.008). Geographic information system spatial analysis showed that for the three participants with the highest number of evacuations, the total distance traveled (minutes) for evacuation was 884.1 km (678.9 min), 159.0 km (158.8 min), and 36.8 km (54.8 min). These findings suggest that initial evacuation behaviors and shelter selection may significantly affect evacuation duration among home-visit psychiatric nursing patients.