Mental health and coping styles of children and adolescent survivors one year after the 2008 Chinese earthquake

Yan Zhang, Fanchang Kong, Lin Wang, Hong Chen, Xiao Gao, Xiaohong Tan, Han Chen, Jianguo Lv and Yong Liu

Children and Youth Services Review, 2010, vol. 32, issue 10, 1403-1409

Abstract: The objective of the study was to investigate the post-traumatic psychological reactions of children and adolescents of 2008 Chinese earthquake in two samples from a highly exposed area (HEA) (n = 188) and a lowly exposed area (LEA) (n = 235). One year after the earthquake, 423 individuals were randomly selected to form two representative samples and were approached with two self-report psychological questionnaires, Mental Health Scale (MHS) and Coping Scale (CS). They suggested that the mental health and coping styles were significantly different for children and adolescents from HEA and LEA. Highly exposed group experienced higher levels of mental health problems than lowly exposed group. Girls were more vulnerable than boys in HEA. Exposure areas, Self-blaming, Rationalization, Fantasy, Avoiding and Ask for help coping style were the significant determinants of mental health. They predicted 56% of the MHS variance for both groups. These findings indicate the need to provide trauma interventions, effective prevention to post-traumatic mental symptoms, and mental health services to the children and adolescent survivors in HEA, especially for the girls.

Keywords: Earthquake; Children; and; adolescents; Mental; health; Coping; styles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190-7409(10)00169-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:32:y:2010:i:10:p:1403-1409

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().