Post-traumatic positive and negative psychological changes experienced by child and adolescent earthquake survivors in remote rural western China: a cross-sectional study six years after the Yushu earthquake

ABSTRACT

Background: Yushu, Qinghai province is located in remote Tibetan plateau in Western China, struck by a disastrous earthquake in 2010. The study aimed to find out the positive and negative psychological changes and related risk factors of children and adolescents who had experienced Yushu earthquake, 6 years after it occurred.

Methods: A cross-sectional research was adopted in the capital of Yushu Autonomous Prefecture in August 2016. The short form of the Changes in Outlook Questionnaire (CiOQ-S) was used, which is a 10-item self-report instrument consists of two subscales. A total of 591 valid questionnaires completed by local junior students were finally included in our study.

Results: The mean scores of the positive and negative psychological changes were 19.28 and 13.08, respectively. The factors associated with positive psychological changes included high level of education, male gender, and uninjured in the earthquake. The factors associated with negative psychological changes included living in a pasture instead of downtown, injured during the earthquake, and not receiving psychological counselling.

Conclusions: The current analysis tries to investigate the long-term psychological effects of earthquakes among children and adolescents, which aims to improve the psychological health status for child and adolescent survivors of similar events.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychological changes
• CiOQ-S (short form of Changes in Outlook Questionnaire)
• Yushu earthquake
• children
• adolescents

Authors’ contributions

XL, BHT, and LLZ conceived the idea and designed the study. XL, BHT, CX, and JQD collected the data. BHT and XL cleaned the data. XL, BHT, and FJZ draft and revised the manuscript. All authors critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to warmly thank the survey respondents for their participation in the study and the academic departments who provided funding for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Consent to publish

Yes

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Verbal consents to participate were obtained from the school principals, who made an announcement to the students regarding the study. No written informed consents were obtained from a parent or guardian for participants under 16 years old since we think the verbal consents are enough. The ethics committee of the Naval Medical University approved the study, and all respondents voluntarily agreed to participate in our survey.

Additional information

Funding

Work on this manuscript was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China X. L., grant number [71774166]; B.T., grant number [71804186]; L. Z, grant number [71774167], Chinese National Defence Research Program of Science and Technology X. L., grant number [3605021] and Shanghai Pujiang Program B.T., grant number [18PJC116]. The National Natural Science Foundation of China X. L., grant number [71774166]; B.T., grant number [71804186], Chinese National Defence Research Program of Science and Technology X. L., grant number [3605021] and Shanghai Pujiang Program B.T., grant number [18PJC116] supported in the data collection of our study and the National Natural Science Foundation of China L. Z, grant number [71774167], [91224005] will support the paper publication fee.