At 2:28 p.m. on May 12th, 2008, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck Wenchuan, China. There have been a number of studies on the mental health and posttraumatic psychological symptoms of survivors of natural disasters over the past 20 years (Frankenberg et al., 2008; van Griensven et al., 2006), however, the focus in recent studies on earthquakes has been adult trauma survivors (Armenian et al., 2000; Bland et al., 2005; Bodvarsdottir & Elklit, 2004; Priebe et al., 2011). Younger trauma survivors tend to be more vulnerable because they are at an earlier stage of human development and so psychological reactions may have lifelong consequences (Catapano et al., 2001; Thienkrua et al., 2006). Specifically, Jia et al. (2010) found that more than one of every five child survivors were identified as having posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression 15 months after the Wenchuan earthquake. Therefore, particular care should be given to children and young people of school age. In most previous studies, mental health disorders were assessed only once: several months or within one to two years after the earthquake (Armenian et al., 2000; Bodvarsdottir & Elklit, 2004; Catapano et al., 2001; Qu et al., 2012). Longitudinal studies of the effect of experiencing an earthquake on the mental health of survivors are rare. However, longitudinal consequences should be studied to establish the need for and evaluation of interventions for the prevention and treatment of mental disorders in the aftermath of an earthquake. Thus, in this study, our aim was to assess over time the factors that psychologically affected child and adolescent survivors after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.

Method

Participants

We surveyed a sample of 240 children and adolescents (118 girls and 122 boys, aged between 11 and 15, M = 13.57, SD = 0.77) in the second week after the earthquake. Of these, 188 (103 girls and 85 boys, aged between 11 and 15, M = 13.76, SD = 0.80) were traced one year after the earthquake. The girls and boys were from Beichuan County, one of the most affected areas located 35 km from the epicenter. Over 80% of the participants reported that their houses had been seriously damaged, and 67% of the participants lost family members, or had significant others who had either died or were seriously injured.

Measures

Modified versions of the Mental Health Scale (MHS; Wo & Liu, 2003) and the Coping Scale (CS; Xiao & Xu, 1996) were used. These scales have been found to have good validity and reliability (Zhang et al., 2010).

The MHS was developed and validated for assessing Chinese children’s mental health. The modified version contains 53 questions and consists of three subscales: emotion, cognition, and physical adaptation. Each subscale comprises 3 to 11 items, each of which represents one psychosomatic symptom, and has 1 to 5 questions. Questions are answered on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 = no experience to 5 = extremely severe experience of the symptom. A compound score for each item is estimated by averaging the scores of all the item questions. In this study, the scale’s Cronbach’s alpha was .875 and the split-half reliability was .869.

The CS was developed and validated for assessing Chinese children’s coping skills. The modified version consists of three subscales: mature coping, immature coping, and mixed coping. Each subscale comprises 1 to 3 items, each of which has 3 to 5 questions, with a total of 21 questions. Questions are answered on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 = not sure at all to 5 = very sure. A compound score for each item is estimated by averaging the scores of all the item questions. In this study, the scale’s Cronbach’s alpha was .884 and the split-half reliability was .875.

Data Analysis

SPSS version 17.0 was used to analyze the data.

Results

Participants gained higher scores on the MHS in the second week than they did one year after the earthquake on the following: compulsive reexperiencing, escaping, sensitive, indifferent, easily angry, depressed, suicidal, felt guilty, easily fearful, disinterest, inefficacy, insomnia, and easily tired. Participants gained higher scores on the CS in the second week than they did one year after the earthquake on the following: avoiding problems, fantasy, self-blaming, and rationalization (see Table 1).

The results for the MHS compound scores are shown in Table 1. Except for differences at two ages, boys had higher scores than girls on the felt lonely item in the second week, while girls had higher scores than boys on the sensitive and depressed items one year after the earthquake. The results for the CS compound scores showed that girls had higher scores than boys on the asking for help item in the second week. However, girls had higher scores than boys on the self-blaming and rationalization coping styles items, while boys had higher scores than girls on the solving problems coping styles item one year after the earthquake, at a statistically significant level.

Discussion

Results showed that the participants’ mental health and coping styles were significantly different at two weeks postearthquake than they were one year postearthquake. In the second week participants had higher scores on the compulsive reexperiencing, escaping, sensitive, indifferent, easily angry, suicidal, felt guilty, easily fearful, disinterest, inefficacy, insomnia, decreased appetite, avoiding problems, fantasy, self-blaming, and rationalization items than they did one year after the earthquake. It has been shown in several studies (e.g., Bodvarsdottir & Elklit, 2004) that people who have been exposed to very severe earthquakes and other natural disasters experience more serious posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) shortly after the event. Procter and Crowley (2011) state that this is because survivors of natural disasters feel they have no will or reason to live in cases when they have lost their family members and possessions. The survivors in Procter and Crowley’s study exhibited many emotional and cognitive disorders and negative coping styles similar to those in the present study. It was found in another follow-up study carried out at 6 and 12 months after the Chinese earthquake that posttraumatic mental health problems in children remained high for a long period and might reach epidemic proportions (Liu et al., 2011).

Results showed that boys experienced more feelings of loneliness than girls at the second week only. This may be because girls tend to seek social support and adopt helpful coping styles more than do boys. Our results are consistent with those gained in studies by Groome and Soureti (2004) and Roussos et al. (2005). The former researchers found that girls appear more vulnerable, and the latter reported that the participants’ gender makes a small but statistically significant contribution to their PTSD score, with girls scoring higher than boys. However, several researchers found no differences between boys and girls in terms of their mental health after the Chinese earthquake (Jia et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2011).

Our results show that early support for survivors who have experienced a high level of loss may reduce their mental health disorders following an earthquake. Public health providers may be able to use our results to enhance their counseling services and provide effective interventions for child and adolescent earthquake survivors.

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This research was sponsored by the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences in Universities (06JJD720013)

MOE Youth Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (12YJC190010) (11YJC190036)

and Sichuan Provincial Department of Education Project (11SA091)

People&rsquo

s Republic of China.

Yong Zheng, School of Psychology, Southwest University, No. 2 Tiansheng Road, BeiBei, Chongqing 400715, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected]