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

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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.

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Data availability

The dataset supporting the conclusions of this article is available at https://charls.charlsdata.com/pages/Data/2015-charls-wave4/en.html.

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Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Funding

This work was supported by Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST (2022QNRC001). The funders had no role in the study design; data collection, analysis, or interpretation; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the article for publication.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Population Research, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Yan Liu

  2. School of Nursing, Kunming Medical University, Yunnan, China

    Xin Ning

  3. The Geriatrics Hospital of Yunnan Province, No.38 Yuchuan Lane Commercial New Village, Tuodong Road, Guandu District, Kunming, Yunnan Province, 650011, P.R. China

    Li Zhang, Hui Huang & Jianwei Zhou

  4. Department of Global Health, School of Public Health, Peking University, No.38 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100191, P.R. China

    Yanan Luo

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  1. Yan Liu
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Contributions

YNL. Literature review: YL. Data curation: YL. Formal analysis: YL, YNL. Methodology: YL, YNL. Project administration: YNL. Visualization: YL. Writing–original draft: YL. Writing–review & editing: YL, YNL, XN, LZ, HH, JWZ.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jianwei Zhou or Yanan Luo.

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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.

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The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare for this study.

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Liu, Y., Ning, X., Zhang, L. et al. Post-traumatic growth in later-life cognitive function? Evidence from the 1976 Great Tangshan Earthquake. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-024-02647-9

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