Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies, Kirkeveien 166, Building 48, 0407 Oslo, Norway.
BMC Psychiatry. 2011 Dec 15;11:195. doi: 10.1186/1471-244X-11-195.
There is limited research on the relevance of family structures to the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress following disasters. We longitudinally studied the effects of marital and parental statuses on posttraumatic stress reactions after the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami and whether persons in the same households had more shared stress reactions than others.
The study included a tourist population of 641 Norwegian adult citizens, many of them from families with children. We measured posttraumatic stress symptoms with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised at 6 months and 2 years post-disaster. Analyses included multilevel methods with mixed effects models.
Results showed that neither marital nor parental status was significantly related to posttraumatic stress. At both assessments, adults living in the same household reported levels of posttraumatic stress that were more similar to one another than adults who were not living together. Between households, disaster experiences were closely related to the variance in posttraumatic stress symptom levels at both assessments. Within households, however, disaster experiences were less related to the variance in symptom level at 2 years than at 6 months.
These results indicate that adult household members may influence one another's posttraumatic stress reactions as well as their interpretations of the disaster experiences over time. Our findings suggest that multilevel methods may provide important information about family processes after disasters.
关于家庭结构与灾难后创伤后应激的发展和维持之间的相关性,研究有限。我们对 2004 年东南亚海啸后,婚姻和父母身份对创伤后应激反应的影响进行了纵向研究,并探讨了同一家庭中的人是否比其他人有更多的共同应激反应。
该研究包括 641 名挪威成年公民的游客群体,其中许多人来自有孩子的家庭。我们使用修订后的事件影响量表在灾难后 6 个月和 2 年时测量创伤后应激症状。分析包括使用混合效应模型的多层次方法。
结果表明,婚姻和父母身份都与创伤后应激无关。在两次评估中,居住在同一家庭中的成年人彼此之间报告的创伤后应激水平比不住在一起的成年人更为相似。在家庭之间,灾难经历与两次评估中的创伤后应激症状水平的差异密切相关。然而,在家庭内部,与 6 个月相比,灾难经历与 2 年内症状水平的差异相关性较低。
这些结果表明,成年家庭成员可能会相互影响彼此的创伤后应激反应以及他们对灾难经历的解释。我们的研究结果表明,多层次方法可能为灾难后家庭过程提供重要信息。