Causal attributions and post-traumatic stress in adolescents

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Trauma Studies
• Disaster Psychology

Background:

• Adolescent survivors of disasters face unique psychological challenges.
• Understanding causal attributions is crucial for post-traumatic adjustment.
• The Jupiter cruise ship sinking provides a specific context for studying disaster impact.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the link between causal attributions and post-traumatic symptomatology in adolescent survivors.
• To examine how attributions for negative, uncontrollable events relate to trauma symptoms one year post-disaster.
• To explore the implications of these findings within an attributional model of shame.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal study design following adolescent survivors of the Jupiter cruise ship sinking.
• Assessment of causal attributions made by survivors regarding the disaster.
• Measurement of post-traumatic stress symptoms one year after the incident.

Main Results:

• Adolescents making more internal causal attributions for negative events reported higher levels of post-traumatic stress.
• Attributions for uncontrollable aspects of the disaster were significantly associated with trauma symptoms.
• A clear relationship was found between attributional style and long-term psychological outcomes.

Conclusions:

• Internal causal attributions for negative, uncontrollable disaster events are linked to increased post-traumatic stress in adolescents.
• The findings support an attributional model where self-blame exacerbates trauma responses.
• Interventions focusing on attributional retraining may aid adolescent survivors' recovery from disasters.