The impact of received social support on posttraumatic growth after disaster: The importance of both support quantity and quality.

OBJECTIVE: Few studies have investigated the relationship between received social support (actual help received) and posttraumatic growth (PTG), and these studies focused only on the quantity of support received. This study examined the joint implications of both the quantity and quality of postdisaster received social support for PTG. METHOD: Data were collected from Lushan earthquake (China, in 2013) survivors at 7 (n = 199) and 31 (n = 161) months after the earthquake. The main effects of quantity and quality of received support, and the interaction between support quantity and support quality, were examined using hierarchical multiple regression analyses controlling for the extent of disaster exposure, postdisaster negative life events, and sociodemographic factors. RESULTS: Neither quantity nor quality of received social support exerted significant main effects on PTG. However, the influence of the amount of received social support on PTG was moderated by the quality of received social support. Among survivors who appraised the postdisaster social support they received as higher in quality, greater amounts of received support were associated with more subsequent PTG. Among those survivors who appraised the postdisaster social support they received as lower in quality, greater quantity of received support was associated with lower levels of reported PTG. CONCLUSION: This study calls attention to the importance of enhancing the quality of help provided to disaster survivors because simply "more" support is not necessarily better. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Social support following a natural disaster: A longitudinal study of survivors of the 2013 Lushan earthquake in China.

The idea that social support post-disaster is beneficial to survivors' mental health is widely accepted by both researchers and practitioners. However previous social support studies are mainly focused on perceived social support, and the limited received social support studies have produced mixed results. In this study we modelled the influence of both quantity and quality of received social support on long-term mental health outcomes in a longitudinal study of 2013 Lushan earthquake survivors in China. Survivors were invited to complete a questionnaire interview 7 months after the earthquake and were followed up 31 months later (n = 161). Hierarchical regression analyses that controlled for disaster exposure variables showed that greater quality of social support received 7 months after disaster predicted lower levels of posttraumatic stress symptoms and psychological distress two years later, however quantity of received social support was not significant in predicting these two outcomes. These results remained robust when controlled for gender, negative life events and family financial status. The findings of this study suggest that what appears to be critical in the process of supporting disaster survivors is the quality, not necessarily the quantity, of support provided.

Failure to Identify Somatic Mutations in Monozygotic Twins Discordant for Schizophrenia by Whole Exome Sequencing.

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a severe, debilitating, and complex psychiatric disorder with multiple causative factors. An increasing number of studies have determined that rare variations play an important role in its etiology. A somatic mutation is a rare form of genetic variation that occurs at an early stage of embryonic development and is thought to contribute substantially to the development of SCZ. The aim of the study was to explore the novel pathogenic somatic single nucleotide variations (SNVs) and somatic insertions and deletions (indels) of SCZ. METHODS: One Chinese family with a monozygotic (MZ) twin pair discordant for SCZ was included. Whole exome sequencing was performed in the co-twin and their parents. Rigorous filtering processes were conducted to prioritize pathogenic somatic variations, and all identified SNVs and indels were further confirmed by Sanger sequencing. RESULTS: One somatic SNV and two somatic indels were identified after rigorous selection processes. However, none was validated by Sanger sequencing. CONCLUSIONS: This study is not alone in the failure to identify pathogenic somatic variations in MZ twins, suggesting that exonic somatic variations are extremely rare. Further efforts are warranted to explore the potential genetic mechanism of SCZ.