A National Longitudinal Study of Community Trauma Exposure

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

Community-based traumas are pandemic and recurring, profoundly taxing individual well-being and societal resources. Yet surprisingly few studies have considered how cumulative exposure to collective and individual stressors may contribute to patterns of adjustment over time. Effects of community traumas can span physical boundaries as well as temporal boundaries, with widespread media coverage transmitting a trauma's impact far beyond the directly exposed population, and challenging the traditional view of trauma exposure. Designing and implementing research on collective traumas requires overcoming formidable scientific and logistical challenges resulting from the fundamental unpredictability of these events. Previous studies that have examined adjustment to community traumas usually involve recalling events long after it occurred, making it difficult to disambiguate the effects of trauma on subsequent adjustment. To be able to draw more solid conclusions about long-term trauma reactions requires having a large sample in which information about pre-event mental and physical health, and baseline assessments of psychological responses have been collected during the acute period of trauma response. The proposed work provides such an opportunity by leveraging the investigators' previous research following a large representative sample for which health and trauma exposure was collected. As a result, the proposed work provides a remarkable opportunity to examine how individuals respond over an extended period of time to repeated direct and indirect exposure to terrorism and other individual and collective traumas. Previous work by the investigators involved conducting a large, nationally representative longitudinal study (including oversampling of Boston and New York areas) in which individuals were surveyed immediately after a traumatic collective trauma, the Boston Marathon Bombings (BMB), and at two additional times, on the 6- and 12-month anniversaries of the BMB. The proposed work provides a unique opportunity to collect two additional waves of data on this sample in order to track ongoing direct and indirect exposure to individual and collective stressors, and their role in adjustment, over time. The research has three primary aims: 1) To investigate prospectively how different types of trauma exposure (i.e., direct vs. indirect media-based) are associated with patterns of long-term adjustment after collective stress (e.g., the BMB); 2) To investigate whether cumulative exposure to prior individual or collective traumas sensitizes individuals to or inoculates them against the negative consequences of subsequent events; and 3) To investigate prospectively the extent to which post-BMB trauma exposure (e.g., direct, indirect, individual, collective) explains predicted associations between acute BMB-related stress response and adjustment over time. This research will advance knowledge of how individuals cope with collective traumas and highly stressful events, furthering understanding of the unique needs of individuals traumatized by terrorism, both directly, and indirectly, via exposure to media coverage. Such work will provide information to help identify those at risk for subsequent difficulties following major traumatic events. Moreover, the work has important implications for informing the theory and practice of preparing people for collective traumas and helping them cope with the aftermath. These findings will also add to the foundation of knowledge for helping policymakers, service providers, and community leaders design educational and intervention efforts that are cost-effective and sensitive to the needs of the populace.