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. 2025 Feb;60(2):525-533.
doi: 10.1007/s00127-024-02647-9. Epub 2024 Apr 23.

Post-traumatic growth in later-life cognitive function? Evidence from the 1976 Great Tangshan Earthquake

Yan Liu  1 , Xin Ning  2 , Li Zhang  3 , Hui Huang  3 , Jianwei Zhou  4 , Yanan Luo  5
Affiliations

Post-traumatic growth in later-life cognitive function? Evidence from the 1976 Great Tangshan Earthquake

Yan Liu et al. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2025 Feb.

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to explore the long-term impacts of exposure to earthquake in adolescence on later-life cognitive function in China.

Methods: Data were from the 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Our analytical sample comprised 4394 participants aged 49 to 78 from two birth cohorts born between 1937 and 1966: exposed cohort during adolescence (born between 1952 and 1966), and non-exposed cohort during adolescence (born between 1937 and 1951). We defined earthquake exposure as the exposure severity of the 1976 Great Tangshan Earthquake (GTE). We selected community environmental characteristics as our key moderators. A difference-in-differences (DID) method was employed to estimate the long-term impact of the GTE on later-life cognitive function.

Results: We found that exposure to the earthquake during adolescence resulted in higher scores of later-life cognitive function (for males: β = 2.18; 95% CI: 0.70-3.66; for females: β = 1.22; 95% CI: 0.11-2.33). For males, this impact was moderated by community environmental characteristics including the old-age allowance program (β = 3.07; 95% CI: 1.94-4.19) and the condition of basic community infrastructures (β = 1.52; 95% CI: 0.84-2.19).

Conclusions: Our study supports the post-traumatic growth theory. This finding suggest that individuals with early-life traumatic exposure need to be focused on. Additionally, improving the conditions of community infrastructures and establishing a community environment with comfort and security may be pretty important for promoting cognitive function and post-traumatic growth.

Keywords: Difference-in-differences; Exposure to earthquake; Later-life cognitive function; Long-term effect; Post-traumatic growth.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethical approval: All procedures involving human subjects were approved by the Peking University Ethical Review Committee (IRB00001052–11015). All of the respondents involved in the study provided written informed consent before their participation in this study. All methods in this study were performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. Competing interests: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare for this study.

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