The present study was to identify the quality of life (QOL), the needs of help and the mode of coping among the health personnel of Naradhiwasrajanagarindra Hospital in a terrorism situation, the first research in Thailand. The chaos of separatist insurgency in the southern part of Thailand has been re-emerged since 2004. The present study was seeking for ways the health personnel coped with the situation while their quality of life and needs that were affected how they had handled the events were explored. General questionnaire, quality of life rand 36 SF 36 questionnaires, help seeking questionnaire and Mode of coping with the terrorism questionnaire were sent to all health personnel in the hospital in November 2007. 392 (65.3%) complete questionnaire were received from 600 distributed papers. They were female 328 (83.7%) and male 64 (16.3%), at the age of 21-59 years old (the mean age of 39.05 SD + 9.82), with three different religions, Buddhist 269 (68.6%), Muslim 122 (31.1%) and Christian 1 (0.3%). Thirty nine responses (9.9%) had been directly exposed to a terrorist attack, while 353 responses (90.1%) had a family member or friends who had been exposed. The results revealed that the overall mean scores of QOL were 73.1 + SD 15.5. Mean scores of male were significantly lower than female in general health, social functioning and role-emotional subscales. QOL mean scores of those with no terrorism exposure were significantly higher than those with terrorism exposure in role-physical, social functioning and mental health subscales. The most need of help for the personnel was safety of life and belongings (30.6%) followed by the need of money (23.0%). To cope with the terrorist attack, people (81.7%) would always resort to religious beliefs (72.0%) talk it out with coworkers, friends about their feelings, and (68.7%) inquire about the safety of their families and friends after the incident. Certainly, terrorism affected QOL and the most need of people in violent areas was life safety which agrees with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Keywords: Quality of life, Rand 36 SF-36, Needs, Mode of coping, Terrorism