Cited by 27Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ResearchChild Abuse and TraumaDisaster Management and Resilience

Neural vulnerability and hurricane-related media are associated with post-traumatic stress in youth

Open access
Dick, Anthony Steven, Silva, Karina, Gonzalez, Raul, Sutherland, Matthew T., Laird, Angela R., Thompson, Wesley K., Tapert, Susan F., Squeglia, Lindsay M. +6 more·2021·Nature Human Behaviour

Abstract

The human toll of disasters extends beyond death, injury and loss. Post-traumatic stress (PTS) can be common among directly exposed individuals, and children are particularly vulnerable. Even children far removed from harm's way report PTS, and media-based exposure may partially account for this phenomenon. In this study, we examine this issue using data from nearly 400 9- to 11-year-old children collected before and after Hurricane Irma, evaluating whether pre-existing neural patterns moderate associations between hurricane experiences and later PTS. The 'dose' of both self-reported objective exposure and media exposure predicted PTS, the latter even among children far from the hurricane. Furthermore, neural responses in brain regions associated with anxiety and stress conferred particular vulnerability. For example, heightened amygdala reactivity to fearful stimuli moderated the association between self-reported media exposure and PTS. Collectively, these findings show that for some youth with measurable vulnerability, consuming extensive disaster-related media may offer an alternative pathway to disaster exposure that transcends geography and objective risk.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/s41562-021-01216-3

Cites

79 of 79 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Indirect exposure is associated with stress symptoms and other psychopathologies comparable to those linked to direct exposure.

    “Recent research provided extensive evidence that indirect exposure is associated with stress symptoms and other psychopathologies comparable to those linked to direct exposure [13,16,23-27].”

    From Impact of Media-Induced Uncertainty on Mental Health: Narrative-Based Perspective. (2025) · cites this paper as [24]

    The Results (page unavailable) associate hurricane-related media exposure with post-traumatic stress symptoms in youth; the Discussion reports media and objective-exposure effect sizes in a similar range. The paper does not establish the claim about other psychopathologies, so it supports only the stress-symptom portion. (LLM, conf=0.87)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [67]Heller AS Functional brain imaging and PTSD, 315– 330 (Oxford University Press, New York, 2018).

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Dick, A. S., Silva, K., Gonzalez, R., Sutherland, M. T., Laird, A. R., Thompson, W. K., Tapert, S. F., Squeglia, L. M., Gray, K. M., Nixon, S. J., Cottler, L. B., La Greca, A. M., Gurwitch, R. H., & Comer, J. S.
Affiliations
  • Florida International University (US)
  • University of Houston (US)
  • University of California San Diego (US)
  • Medical University of South Carolina (US)
  • University of Florida (US)
  • Duke Medical Center (US)
Corresponding author
Dick, Anthony Steven
Venue
Nature Human Behaviour
Published
2021-11-15
Volume
5
Issue
11
Pages
1578-1589
ISSN
2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3211463329
Cited by
27
References
78
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1
FWCI
2.39
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • U.S. Department of Health & Human Services | NIH | National Institute on Drug Abuse (U01DA041048)
  • National Science Foundation (RAPID 1805645)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Disaster Management and Resilience
Keywords
post-traumatic stress, Hurricane Irma, children, amygdala reactivity, anxiety, stress, moderated mediation
MeSH terms
Amygdala, Brain, Child, Female, Florida, Gyrus Cinguli, Hippocampus, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Mass Media, Risk Factors, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic, Cyclonic Storms, Functional Neuroimaging

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review