Traumatic severity and trait resilience as predictors of posttraumatic stress disorder and depressive symptoms among adolescent survivors of the Wenchuan earthquake

Liuhua Ying; Xinchun Wu; Chongde Lin; Lina Jiang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089401

Traumatic severity and trait resilience as predictors of posttraumatic stress disorder and depressive symptoms among adolescent survivors of the Wenchuan earthquake

PLoS One. 2014 Feb 26;9(2):e89401. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0089401. eCollection 2014.

Authors

Liuhua Ying¹, Xinchun Wu², Chongde Lin³, Lina Jiang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China ; Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
² School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
³ Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
⁴ College of Humanities and Law, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Purpose: To examine the associations between trauma severity, trait resilience, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive symptoms among adolescent survivors of the Wenchuan earthquake, China.

Methods: 788 participants were randomly selected from secondary schools in the counties of Wenchuan and Maoxian, the two areas most severely affected by the earthquake. Participants completed four main questionnaires including the Child PTSD Symptom Scale, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale for Children, the Connor and Davidson's Resilience Scale, and the Severity of Exposure to Earthquake Scale.

Results: After adjusting for the effect of age and gender, four aspects of trauma severity (i.e., direct exposure, indirect exposure, worry about others, and house damage) were positively associated with the severity of PTSD and depressive symptoms, whereas trait resilience was negatively associated with PTSD and depressive symptoms and moderated the relationship between subjective experience (i.e., worry about others) and PTSD and depressive symptoms.

Conclusions: Several aspects (i.e., direct exposure, indirect exposure, worry about others, and house damage) of earthquake experiences may be important risk factors for the development and maintenance of PTSD and depression. Additionally, trait resilience exhibits the beneficial impact on PTSD and depressive symptoms and buffers the effect of subjective experience (i.e., worry about others) on PTSD and depressive symptoms.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
China
Depression / psychology*
Earthquakes*
Female
Humans
Male
Resilience, Psychological*
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / psychology*
Survivors*

Grants and funding

This study was supported by Key Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research, Ministry of Education, China (Grant number: 08JZD0026), Projects of Key Research Institutes of Humanities and Social Science of Ministry of Education, China (Grant number: 11JJD190006) and Science Foundation of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (Grant number: 13062175-Y). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.