Do religious habits and coping help in the immediate aftermath of a crisis? Relations with Hurricane Katrina evacuees' acute stress symptoms and functional impairment.

OBJECTIVE

Religious coping has been shown to relate to psychological adjustment in survivors of disasters months or even years afterward. However, because very few studies have assessed coping and well-being during the immediate crisis, little is known about the role of religiousness at this critical time.

METHOD

We studied a sample of 132 Hurricane Katrina evacuees (56% male, 74.2% African American, mean age of 43 years) relocated to a Red Cross emergency shelter in Austin, Texas, within 19 days of Hurricane Katrina's landfall.

RESULTS

Participants reported high levels of acute stress disorder (ASD) symptoms and functional impairment as well as high resource loss. Belief that God is in control and negative religious coping (perceiving punishment) were positively related to ASD symptoms while negative religious coping (perceiving abandonment) was related to higher functional impairment. The negative religious coping-ASD symptom relationship was moderated by resource loss, such that, for those with lower levels of resource loss, negative religious coping (perceiving punishment) related to even higher levels of ASD symptoms, an effect that diminished with higher resource loss. Neither positive religious coping nor pre-Katrina frequency of service attendance or private prayer related to ASD symptoms or functional impairment.

CONCLUSIONS

At least in this sample at the height of disruption following a disaster, little evidence of salutary effects of religiousness were observed. It may be that such effects take time to emerge as people begin their recovery processes or that not all groups find help through their religious coping resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).