Science & Healthcare

Background: the population residing on the territories exposed to ionizing radiation, suffer from many stressors, which creates medical and psychological tension.

Aim: to conduct a systematic search of valid scientific data in order to assess the state of psychological health of population living in ecologically unfavorable territories.

Materials and methods. The search for scientific publications was carried out in the evidence-based medicine’s databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, TripDatabase, ResearchGate) and in the electronic scientific libraries (CyberLeninka). At the first stage, the search was performed in automatic mode, while at the next step the search was carried out "manually", which allowed us to find a number of additional publications.

Results: the research papers found in electronic databases are characterized by the marked heterogeneity. Most of the published studies belong to the category of cross-sectional, we could also find a small amount of cohort studies and unsystematic literature reviews. In general, the research papers found can be conditionally divided according to the geographic principle, depending on the region of radio-ecological disaster.

Conclusions: most of the published papers describe the psychological state of clean-up workers at Chernobyl or Fukushima-1 nuclear power plants, as well as the state of population residing at the adjacent territories. There is only a limited number of publications devoted to mental and psychological effects associated with the activities of former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, which justifies the need to continue examinations