title: Spirituality and religiosity in the aftermath of a natural catastrophe in Italy.
abstract: The aim of this study is to assess the influence of spirituality and religiousness on the psychological traumatic effects of a catastrophic event in a population that had been exposed to an earthquake compared with a control population that had not been exposed. A total of 901 people have been evaluated using: (1) Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality; (2) Impact of Event Scale and (3) Trauma and Loss Spectrum-Self Report (TALS-SR). Self-perceptions of spirituality and religiousness were used to rank the samples, distinguishing between spiritual and religious, spiritual-only, religious-only and neither spiritual nor religious groups. The sample that had experienced the earthquake showed lower scores in spiritual dimension. The religious-only group of those who were exposed to the earthquake demonstrated TALS-SR re-experiencing and arousal domain scores similar to the population that was not exposed. A weakening of spiritual religiosity in people having difficulty coping with trauma is a consistent finding. We further observed that the religious dimension helped to buffer the community against psychological distress caused by the earthquake. The religiosity dimension can positively affect the ability to cope with traumatic experiences.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mental Health, L'Aquila, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Stratta
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Capanna
authors.forename: Ilaria
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Riccardi
authors.forename: Giulio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Perugi
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Toni
authors.forename: Liliana
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dell'Osso
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rossi
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004190:Disasters; D055866:Earthquakes; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D029181:Spirituality; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D017741:Survivors / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult