Psychological consequences after the March 11, 2004, terrorist attack in Madrid in victims and relatives

This paper is concerned with psycho-logical aftermath in victims directly exposed to the March 11, 2004, terrorist attack in Madrid and their relatives. Sample was formed by 117 indi-viduals with a mean age of 39,8 years, being the 59,5% females. The 66,1% of the overall sample had al least one relative killed, and the 87,9% at least one friend killed during the train bombings. This study followed a similar methodology than other three papers of out research group published in this volume by using for data collection a struc-tured phone interview, carried out between 1 and 3 month after the terrorist attack. Results show that this group presents the highest psychopatho-logical prevalence in comparison with the general population, affected zones and emergency per-sonnel groups, due to the impact severity of the traumatic stressor. The 45,53% of the sample suf-fered panic attack during or soon after the terror-ist attacks, especially when they heard bad news; the 31,3% presented major depression, and the 35,9% posttraumatic stress disorder (28,2% di-rected attributable to terrorism attacks); further-more, there were other psychological sequelae such as increased tobacco, alcohol and drugs con-sumption.