Social Support, Religious Coping, and Traumatic Stress Among Hurricane Katrina Survivors of Southern Mississippi: A Sequential Mediational Model

The scale and scope of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina has made it one of America's deadliest natural disasters in the last 100 years. The physical destruction caused by Katrina was enormous, as was its impact on mental health. One of the common mental health outcomes associated with natural disasters are symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Using a college sample who were living in an area struck by Hurricane Katrina in southern Mississippi, we sought to further elucidate the mechanism underlying the relationship between trauma exposure and PTSD symptomatology. We tested a double mediational path model linking trauma exposure to PTSD symptoms through the impact of trauma exposure on the engagement of religious coping and then social support. Our model demonstrated good fit to the data and indicated that negative religious coping, but not positive religious coping, significantly accounted for the relationship between trauma exposure and PTSD symptoms and that this indirect pathway was in turn accounted for by both instrumental social support as well as emotional social support. Positive religious coping was also significantly associated with instrumental support and emotional support but was unrelated to trauma exposure. Considerations for natural disaster interventions along with the impact of positive and negative religious coping on resiliency and recovery are discussed.