Personality Predictors of PostTraumatic Stress Disorder in Survivors of the Sichuan Earthquake and Orphans

The personality predictors of posttraumatic stress disorder in orphan survivors after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China were investigated. Half a year after the earthquake, 196 preearthquake and 116 postearthquake orphans who survived were recruited. All participants completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire for Children (Gong, 1984) and Children’s Revised Impact of Event Scale (Smith, Perrin, Dyregrov, & Yule, 2003). The regression analysis showed that the Neuroticism score was the strongest predictor of the severity of PTSD symptoms for both pre- and postearthquake orphans. For the preearthquake orphans, the Extraversion trait predicted Arousal negatively, and the Lie trait predicted Intrusion and Arousal positively. However, for the postearthquake orphans, only the Extraversion trait predicted Avoidance positively