Children's adjustment following Hurricane Katrina: the role of primary caregivers

Abstract

Hurricane Katrina severely disrupted the lives of many children and families in the central Gulf Coast of the United States. Face-to-face interviews with child-caregiver dyads were conducted at approximately 1 year posthurricane (T1) and 6-10 months later (T2). The contribution of several factors-caregiver's self-reported symptomatology and coping advice and child perceptions of caregiver distress, unavailability, warmth, and caregiver-child conflict-to child-reported posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and depressive symptoms was examined. Findings provide partial support for the importance of the caregiving context to children's adjustment. Specifically, higher levels of caregiver-child conflict at T1 were associated with more PTSS at T2, controlling for baseline symptoms. In contrast, higher levels of caregiver education were negatively related to child PTSS at T2. After adjusting for objective hurricane exposure and symptoms at T1, none of the caregiving variables was related to child-reported depressive symptoms at T2. The implications of these findings for efforts to promote children's adjustment after disaster are discussed.

Keywords: Hurricane Katrina; caregiver distress; caregiver warmth; caregiver-child conflict; caregivers; children; depressive symptoms; disaster; posttraumatic stress; trauma.