Coping Strategies and Psychological Maladjustment/Adjustment: A Meta-Analytic Approach with Children and Adolescents Exposed to Natural Disasters

Experiences of adolescents affected by earthquakes: A qualitative study

PURPOSE

The aim of the study is to explore the experiences of adolescents affected by the earthquake.

DESIGN AND METHODS

This study was carried out in a descriptive phenomenological design, which is a qualitative research method. This research was conducted as a qualitative investigation utilizing a phenomenological approach to explore the experiences of 12 adolescents through the purposeful snowball sampling method. The interviews were conducted with adolescents who affected by the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes in a city located in the west of the country, between March 18, 2023 and June 30, 2023. Semistructured interviews were employed, and the data underwent inductive content analysis. COREQ reporting guidelines were used.

RESULTS

The participants in this study vividly recounted experiencing intense fear and panic during the earthquake. Subsequent challenges emerged from the lack of coordination in aid efforts, struggles to secure shelter and necessities, and the profound loss of relatives. These adversities posed considerable physical and psychological challenges. Notably, the adolescents' ability to reflect on their past lives and reshape their perspectives proved instrumental in facilitating their adaptation to a new life. However, witnessing the demise of loved ones, grappling with the fear of death and loss, and incessantly discussing the earthquake hindered their adjustment.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

We found that adolescents experienced the quakes in three phases: in the moment, postquake, and adaptation to new life. The first theme underscores the limitations of current effectiveness of quake training. This finding has important implications for policy to better prepare the adolescent population for quake disasters. The second theme reveals that the communication and coordination problems experienced after the earthquake enable the weaknesses of the system to be noticed and political steps should be taken in this direction. The third theme focuses on the factors that increase or decrease the psychosocial adaptation of adolescents who have experienced this traumatic experience to the new life. This provides important clues to improve and support adolescent health.

Can a web application foster emotional competence in children and adolescents? The case of PandHEMOT®

The COVID-19 pandemic has had many traumatic consequences for the physical and psychological functioning of children and adolescents. Internet-based interventions can reach a large audience and be a potentially powerful resource for promoting well-being among young people. We tested the efficacy of the web application PandHEMOT®, developed ad hoc for increasing knowledge about pandemics, emotions, and emotion regulation. We involved a sample of 147 Italian third and seventh graders. The sample was assigned to an experimental (participating in the training) and a waitlist condition (who participated following a waitlist design). All the participants completed pretest and posttest measures. The intervention was structured into three units. The training took place between November and December 2021. Generalized linear mixed models and linear mixed models revealed that knowledge about pandemics, emotions, emotion regulation, and metacognitive awareness increased for the experimental condition. Moreover, adolescents performed better than children. The findings supported the efficacy of an Internet-based training for increasing children and adolescents' resilience, according to the standards of evidence-based research.

Big Five personality traits and coping strategies of Italian university students during the COVID-19 pandemic first wave

Introduction

Little is known about the role personality traits may have played for university students in diminishing and compensating for the negative impact of COVID-19 in its early phases, promoting adaptive coping. University students represent a population which was consistently obliged to follow social distance rules due to the early shift of many organizations from face-to-face to online learning. Therefore, it is worth exploring whether the Big Five traits acted as risk or protective factors after the outbreak of a disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic for Italian university students.

Methods

We involved a sample of 2,995 university students who completed an online survey in March 2020. We measured the Big Five personality traits through the Big Five Inventory-2-XS and their coping strategies through the Robust-Pandemic Coping Scale. The latter assessed four COVID-19-related coping dimensions, namely Despair (e.g., including helplessness and feeling lack of control), Aversion (e.g., referring to oppositive strategies), Proactivity (e.g., comprising problem solving and information seeking), and Adjustment (e.g., concerning reappraisal and assertiveness).

Results

Preliminarily, two Linear Mixed Models indicated that university students had higher scores in Conscientiousness, followed by Open-Mindedness, and then Agreeableness. These three traits were, in turn, higher than Extraversion and Negative Emotionality, which did not differ among them. Concerning coping, university students reacted more frequently utilizing adaptive strategies (with Proactivity used more frequently than Adjustment) rather than maladaptive strategies (with Despair higher than Aversion). A Path Analysis examining the relations between the Big Five traits and the four coping dimensions showed that Negative Emotionality can be considered as a risk factor, and that Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Open-Mindedness can be conceptualized as protective factors. More interestingly, we found that Extraversion entailed both a risk and a protective role for Italian university students after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Discussion

Notwithstanding limitations, these findings can be the basis for developing disaster preparation and prevention actions, aiming at promoting students' positive coping towards current and future disasters.

Development and evaluation of psychoeducational resources for adult carers to emotionally support young people impacted by wars: A community case study

Wars and armed conflicts have a devastating impact at the economic, social, and individual level. Millions of children and adolescents are forced to bear their disastrous consequences, also in terms of mental health. Their effects are even more complicated when intertwined with those of other disasters such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. To help them face such adverse events, lay adults can be supported by psychoeducational interventions involving simple tools to assist children and adolescents emotionally. Hence, we planned and implemented two public communication campaigns concerning wars to support adult carers such as parents, teachers, educators, psychologists, first responders, and others interested in young people's wellbeing. We developed psychoeducational materials to help children and adolescents cope with negative emotions related to indirect and direct exposure to wars. This study had the objective to identify the content for two pamphlets, testing their comprehensibility, usability, and utility, and monitoring their dissemination. First, based on classifications of coping strategies and on a previous campaign about COVID-19 pandemic, we decided to include in the psychoeducational materials basic information on news about wars and common reactions to wars, respectively; on emotions that might be experienced; and on coping strategies for dealing with negative emotions. For the first pamphlet, we identified the strategies involving 141 adults. They completed an online survey with open-ended questions concerning ways to help children and adolescents cope with negative emotions associated with the Russia-Ukraine war. For the second pamphlet, we selected the contents based on Psychological First Aid manuals. Through content analyses, we chose 24 strategies. Second, data gathered with 108 adults who had consulted the psychoeducational materials supported their comprehensibility, usability, and utility. Third, we monitored the visibility of the campaigns after the release of the pamphlets, using Google Analytics™ data from the HEMOT^® website through which we disseminated them. To conclude, our findings supported the comprehensibility, the usability, and the utility of the two pamphlets, to be disseminated as psychoeducational materials in the early phase of a disaster.

Eighteen Months of COVID-19 Pandemic Through the Lenses of Self or Others: A Meta-Analysis on Children and Adolescents' Mental Health

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic can have a serious impact on children and adolescents' mental health. We focused on studies exploring its traumatic effects on young people in the first 18 months after that the pandemic was declared, distinguishing them also according to the type of informants (self-report and other-report instruments).

Objective

We applied a meta-analytic approach to examine the prevalence of depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and psychological distress among children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic, considering the moderating role of kind of disorder and/or symptom, type of instrument, and continent.

Method

We used PsycINFO, PubMed, and Scopus databases to identify articles on the COVID-19 pandemic, applying the following filters: participants until 20 years of age, peer-review, English as publication language. Inclusion required investigating the occurrence of disorders and/or symptoms during the first 18 months of the pandemic. The search identified 26 publications.

Results

The meta-analysis revealed that the pooled prevalence of psychological disorders and/or symptoms for children and adolescents, who were not affected by mental health disturbances before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, was .20, 95% CI [.16, .23]. Moreover, we found a moderating role of type of instrument: occurrence was higher for self-report compared to other-report instruments.

Conclusions

The study presented an analysis of the psychological consequences for children and adolescents of the exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic, soliciting further research to identify factors underlying resilience. Notwithstanding limitations such as the small number of eligible articles and the fact that we did not examine the role of further characteristics of the studies (such as participants' age or design), this meta-analysis is a first step for future research documenting the impact of such an unexpected and devastating disaster like the COVID-19 pandemic.