Psychological symptoms
anxiety, Post-traumatic stress-disorder, depressive, PTSD, depressive symptoms, depression
In the present study, Cronbach’s alpha for the HADS depression and anxiety subscales were 0.87 and 0.86, respectively. At t0, mean HADS scores in the total group were 3.7 for depressive and 7.3 for anxiety symptoms showing no statistically significant differences between IG and CG. At t1, mean HADS scores remained almost the same for depressive symptoms (3.6), but slightly decreased for anxiety symptoms (6.7) with a significantly higher mean score in the IG compared to CG (7.2 vs. 6.2, p = 0.044). At t2, both HADS scores had continued to decrease slightly, with no statistically significant differences between IG and CG. Comparison of age groups did not reveal statistically significant differences for anxiety and depressive symptoms at any survey point.Cronbach’s alpha for the IES-R subscales was 0.86 for hyperarousal, 0.86 for intrusion and 0.89 for avoidance in the present study. At t0, self-reported distress symptoms in IG and CG were comparable in all IES-R subscales being in the lower third of the score range (hyperarousal: 8.5; intrusion: 9.8; avoidance: 11.1). At t1, mean scores in all IES-R scales had decreased slightly (hyperarousal: 7.6; intrusion: 8.3; avoidance: 10.3). IG and CG showed comparable mean scores for hyperarousal and avoidance, while the mean score for intrusion was significantly lower in CG than in IG (7.5 vs. 9.2; p = 0.033). Comparison between age groups revealed a significantly lower hyperarousal score in the 18–40 age group than in the > 40 age group at t0 (7.9 vs. 9.3; p = 0.041). This difference disappeared at follow-up t1. Post-traumatic stress-disorder (PTSD) was not present at any time.