Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, USA; Department of Health Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, USA.
Department of Oral Health Promotion, Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan.
Soc Sci Med. 2021 Mar;273:113777. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113777. Epub 2021 Feb 13.
Dispositional optimism - the general belief that good things will happen - is considered a key asset for the preservation of mental health after a traumatic life event. However, it has been hypothesized that in extreme situations such as major disasters where positive expectations cannot overcome the grim reality on the ground, being optimistic might be a disadvantage. To test this mismatch hypothesis, this study explores whether higher pre-disaster dispositional optimism is associated with higher posttraumatic stress (PTS) and depressive symptoms among individuals who experienced the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.
Information on optimism was collected from community-dwelling residents aged ≥65 years seven months before the 2011 Earthquake/Tsunami in Iwanuma, a Japanese city located 80-km from the epicenter. Data on disaster-related personal experiences (e.g., loss of relatives or friends/housing damage), as well as depressive and PTS symptoms, were collected during a follow-up survey in 2013, 2.5 years after the earthquake and tsunami. Multiple logistic regression models were utilized to evaluate the associations between disaster experiences, optimism, and depressive/PTS symptoms among 962 participants.
Higher pre-disaster dispositional optimism was associated with lower odds of developing depressive symptoms (OR = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.65 to 0.95) and PTS symptoms (OR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.69 to 0.99) after the earthquake. Contrary to the mismatch hypothesis, high dispositional optimism buffered the adverse impact of housing damage on depressive symptoms (interaction term coefficient = -0.63, p = 0.0431), but not on PTS symptoms.
In contrast to the mismatch hypothesis, the results suggest that dispositional optimism is a resilience resource among survivors of a disaster.
性格乐观——即对美好事物会发生的普遍信念——被认为是创伤后生活事件后保持心理健康的关键因素。然而，有人假设，在像重大灾难这样的极端情况下，积极的期望无法克服现实的严峻，那么保持乐观可能是一种劣势。为了验证这种不匹配假设，本研究探讨了在经历 2011 年日本东海岸地震和海啸的个体中，较高的灾难前性格乐观是否与较高的创伤后应激障碍（PTS）和抑郁症状相关。
在距离震中 80 公里的日本岩沼市，在 2011 年地震/海啸发生前七个月，从 65 岁及以上的社区居民那里收集了乐观信息。在 2013 年（地震和海啸发生两年半后）的一次随访调查中，收集了与灾难相关的个人经历（例如，失去亲属或朋友/住房损坏）以及抑郁和 PTS 症状的数据。利用多因素逻辑回归模型评估了 962 名参与者中灾难经历、乐观和抑郁/PTS 症状之间的关联。
灾难前性格乐观与发生抑郁症状的几率较低相关（OR=0.78，95%CI：0.65 至 0.95）和 PTS 症状（OR=0.83，95%CI：0.69 至 0.99）。与不匹配假设相反，高性格乐观缓冲了住房损坏对抑郁症状的不利影响（交互项系数=-0.63，p=0.0431），但对 PTS 症状没有影响。
与不匹配假设相反，结果表明性格乐观是灾难幸存者的一种恢复力资源。
