Dottorato in PSICOLOGIA DINAMICA E CLINICA

Titolo della tesi: Trauma, resilience and psychosocial variables after an earthquake. A case study in the Centre of Italy.

Background Trauma is considered the main psychological outcome when it comes to natural disasters. However, scientific literature provided mixed evidence regarding the link between PTSD and its risk and protective factors. Literature highlighted a strong positive correlation between PTSD and both anxiety and depression, and negative correlation with psychological wellbeing. Moreover, subjects with high score in resilience should be protected from developing psychopathological symptoms; at the same time, alexithymia were considered risk factor. Finally, psychosocial variables, like sense of community and place attachment, seemed to play a part in in this complex scenario. This study examines the relationship of these variables in an Italian group of people exposed to earthquake, comparing with a group of not exposed ones. The chosen method is the case-study, used to identify a particular set of problematic or otherwise interesting events and relationships that naturally occurred in the real word, and also intended to lead to a better understanding of the area of inquiry. Method First, a synthetic overview of trauma and recovery literature was made, in order to describe the state-of-the-art of natural disasters psychology, specifically referring to risk and protective factors Besides, using convenience sampling method, a group of 110 exposed subjects were recruited in the area of Velino Valley, in the centre of Italy; a group of 56 not exposed subjects were also recruited in the area of Castelli Romani, near the city of Rome. Overall, 166 individuals voluntary participated after having provided written and informed consent. The two groups were matched for sex and age. They were asked to complete a demographic questionnaire, the IES-R for PTSD, the PHQ-9 for depression, the GAD-7 for anxiety, the WEMWBS for psychological wellbeing, the RSA for resilience, the TAS-20 for alexithymia, the MTSOC for sense of community, and the NA for place attachment. Preliminary descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlations among the study variables were calculated. The t-tests were computed to examine differences among all the study variables based on exposition to earthquake. Then, several moderated-regression analyses were performed to test whether some interaction effects exist among exposure to traumatic event, resilience, alexithymia, sense of community and place attachment on psychopathology outcome and psychological wellbeing. Results Findings showed significantly higher level of PTSD and higher score in sense of community in the group of subjects exposed to the earthquake. Furthermore, both sense of community and place attachment moderated the relation between Exposition to the trauma and Depression. In particular, high level of sense of community appeared to be a protective factor on developing Depression, but only for not exposed subjects. Besides, Place attachment appeared to be a protective factor for not exposed subjects on developing Depression, but become a risk factor in exposed subjects. These findings may have important implications for further research in the field and psychological intervention on traumatized subjects.