Abstract
The human toll of disasters extends beyond death, injury and loss. Post-traumatic stress (PTS) can be common among directly exposed individuals, and children are particularly vulnerable. Even children far removed from harm’s way report PTS, and media-based exposure may partially account for this phenomenon. In this study, we examine this issue using data from nearly 400 9- to 11-year-old children collected before and after Hurricane Irma, evaluating whether pre-existing neural patterns moderate associations between hurricane experiences and later PTS. The ‘dose’ of both self-reported objective exposure and media exposure predicted PTS, the latter even among children far from the hurricane. Furthermore, neural responses in brain regions associated with anxiety and stress conferred particular vulnerability. For example, heightened amygdala reactivity to fearful stimuli moderated the association between self-reported media exposure and PTS. Collectively, these findings show that for some youth with measurable vulnerability, consuming extensive disaster-related media may offer an alternative pathway to disaster exposure that transcends geography and objective risk.
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Data availability
The ABCD data repository grows and changes over time. The ABCD data used in this report, including the substudy data collected outside of the baseline visits, came from RDS Fix Release 2.0.1 (https://doi.org/10.15154/1504431) and from the minimally processed imaging data available through abcd-sync. The data are available by request from the NIMH Data Archive (https://data-archive.nimh.nih.gov/abcd).
Code availability
All software used in the present analysis is open source. The R code (CRAN; v.3.6.0) to replicate the analysis is available at https://github.com/anthonystevendick/irmasubstudy_abcd.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the families and children who participated and continue to participate in the ABCD Study, as well as staff at the study sites, Data Analysis and Informatics Core, and site personnel involved in data collection and curating the data release. The data used in the preparation of this article were obtained from the ABCD Study (https://abcdstudy.org), held in the NIMH Data Archive. This is a multisite, longitudinal study designed to recruit more than 10,000 children ages 9–10 and follow them over 10 years into early adulthood. The ABCD Study is supported by the National Institutes of Health and additional federal partners under award numbers U01DA041048, U01DA050989, U01DA051016, U01DA041022, U01DA051018, U01DA051037, U01DA050987, U01DA041174, U01DA041106, U01DA041117, U01DA041028, U01DA041134, U01DA050988, U01DA051039, U01DA041156, U01DA041025, U01DA041120, U01DA051038, U01DA041148, U01DA041093, U01DA041089, U24DA041123 and U24DA041147 and National Science Foundation RAPID award number 1805645 to A.S.D. and J.S.C. A full list of supporters is available at https://abcdstudy.org/federal-partners.html. A list of participating sites and a complete list of the study investigators can be found at https://abcdstudy.org/consortium_members/. ABCD consortium investigators designed and implemented the study and/or provided data but did not necessarily participate in the analysis or writing of this report. This manuscript reflects the views of the authors and may not reflect the opinions or views of the National Institutes of Health or ABCD consortium investigators. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
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All authors contributed to the conception of the study and/or the collection and curation of the data. A.S.D. and W.K.T. analysed the data. A.S.D. and J.S.C. wrote the draft manuscript. K.S., R.G., M.T.S., A.R.L., W.K.T., S.F.T., L.M.S., K.M.G., S.J.N., L.B.C., A.M.L.G. and R.H.G. reviewed and commented on the draft for the final write-up of the study. All authors reviewed and approved the manuscript.
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Dick, A.S., Silva, K., Gonzalez, R. et al. Neural vulnerability and hurricane-related media are associated with post-traumatic stress in youth. Nat Hum Behav 5, 1578–1589 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01216-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01216-3
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