The influence of flood exposure and subsequent stressors on youth social-emotional health.

The influence of flood exposure and subsequent stressors on youth social-emotional health. Am J Orthopsychiatry. 2019 Apr 25;: Authors: Felix ED, Nylund-Gibson K, Kia-Keating M, Liu SR, Binmoeller C, Terzieva A Abstract Most disaster mental health research focuses on the relationship between disaster exposure and distress, often neglecting its influence on social-emotional health, despite implications for resilience and well-being after the disaster. Following multiple floods in Texas, a sample of 486 youth aged 10-19 years old (M = 13.74 years, SD = 2.57; 52.9% male) completed measures of disaster exposure, life stressors since the disaster, and social-emotional health. Using mixture regression modeling, we examined differences in the relationship between life stressors and social-emotional health across latent classes of disaster exposure (high, moderate, community, and low exposure). After accounting for mean levels of life stressors, the mean levels of social-emotional health did not differ across exposure classes; however, the strength of the relationship between life stressors and social-emotional health did. Youth in the high exposure group had the highest mean level of life stressors since the disaster. Thus, each additional life stressor did not result in changes in social-emotional health, suggesting saturated stress levels. For youth in the moderate and community exposure classes, increases in life stressors did lower soci...
Source: The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Am J Orthopsychiatry Source Type: research