Mass Trauma and Long-Term Psychological Distress

Abstract

Abstract. Older widowed women in postconflict and postdisaster settings are a potentially vulnerable group due to both exposure to multiple potentially trauma events and ongoing stressors. Drawing from conservation of resources theory, in this study, we tested a model predicting variation in psychological distress among a sample of widows over 50 years of age ( N = 256) in Eastern Sri Lanka. Exposure to traumatic events and degree of damage from the 2004 tsunami were hypothesized to be associated with psychological distress (anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress) indirectly through two contextual stressors (unmet physical needs and economic strain). We fit an unconstrained path model including direct effects from trauma exposure and tsunami damages to mental health distress, followed by a constrained model removing direct effects. We retained the constrained model as the most parsimonious based on a nonsignificant χ2 difference test. In that model, higher exposure to trauma was significantly associated with more problems with unmet physical needs (β = .11, p = .054) and greater economic strain (β = .28, p < .001). Higher levels of tsunami damages are significantly associated with greater economic strain (β = .04, p < .05). These two intermediary variables were, in turn, associated with more severe symptoms of distress. Health problems were controlled in both the intermediary and outcome variables revealing significantly higher distress in association with more health problems. The results highlight the importance of assessing both the impacts of trauma and loss and the ongoing economic deprivation among this population.