Disasters and the Development of Psychopathology in Youth

Depressive symptoms among stress‐exposed youth: Relations with tonic and phasic indices of autonomic functioning

“…Koenig (2020) also has proposed that early life stress, such as trauma exposure, may disrupt a normative increase in vagal activity during adolescence that supports growth of prefrontal regions (Koenig et al., 2018), and leads to alterations among connections between medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala (e.g., weakening of connections as seen in depressed adolescents; Connolly et al., 2017), resulting in dysregulated autonomic functioning and subsequent psychopathology. In addition, ecological models of mass trauma have suggested that exposure (or repeated exposure) to disasters, such as New Orleans youth experienced with Hurricane Katrina and the BP Oil Spill in 2005 and 2010, respectively, negatively impacts emotional development at the ontogenic level (including physiological regulation) by threatening youth's basic needs and security (e.g., fear of getting sick, destruction of their environment) and depletion of resources (e.g., loss of loved ones or friends, loss of family income or parent's job, loss of home, changing schools) that places them at risk for negative outcomes, such as mental health problems or exposure to other stressful or traumatic events (e.g., domestic violence; Weems & Scott, 2017; Weems et al., 2010).…”