Abstract:

This study investigated religiousness as an outcome measure, the persistence of traumatic effects, health, and worldviews after 9/11. Previous research found that trauma could affect these variables. This investigation was a secondary data analysis of an analog comparative clinical trial examining the impact of two interventions--journal-writing and story-listening--on worldviews, health, and religiousness. University students were randomly assigned to write about their emotional responses to 9/11 or listen to relevant stories. The Impact of Events Scale (IES), the World Assumption Scale (WAS), the Age-Universal Intrinsic/Extrinsic Scale-Revised (AUI/E-R), the Short-Form Health Survey (SF-24), and the PTSD Checklist (PCL-C) were administered at baseline (T1) and at the 4-month follow-up (T3). No significant difference resulted between the interventions at baseline and follow-up on a MANOVA comparing the groups on religiousness, worldviews, and health. Both groups reported significant negative worldviews in all subscales and significant diminishment in self-reported general health, social functioning, and mental health, corroborating the studies indicating that trauma leads to negative worldviews but contradicting the research on the positive health effects of journal-writing. Results may be due to selection bias as perhaps the most traumatized completed the follow-up measures. The hypothesis that higher levels of religiousness would predict lower levels of self-reported trauma was not supported when a MANOVA compared baseline to follow-up. Multiple regression analyses explored all dependent measures; a relationship between religiousness and trauma resulted in which the IES avoidance subscale made the most statistically significant contribution in predicting extrinsic religiousness in the story-listening group. Results indicated that both groups displayed increased intrusion, avoidance, and PTSD symptoms by follow-up. Findings demonstrate persistent and pervasive effects of 9/11 across trauma, worldview, and health measures; reasons discussed included retraumatization due to continued terror threats, the Afghanistan war, and press coverage.