May 3, 1999
Warren Robak, [email protected], (310) 794-0777
CATASTROPHIC EVENTS SPEED CHILDREN'S MORAL DEVELOPMENT, BUT POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS MAY LEAVE THEM UNABLE TO ACT MORALLY
Children who live through catastrophic events develop an advanced understanding of right and wrong, but they may not act morally because the trauma disrupts their view of the world, according to researchers from the UCLA School of Medicine.
Studying adolescents who lived through a devastating Armenian earthquake in 1988, researchers found that children who lived near the quake's epicenter had accelerated moral development with advanced understanding of the conscience and of good and evil. They also experienced heightened moral emotions of shame, guilt and pride after acting wrongly or rightly.
But the same children, who witnessed widespread death and disruption in the months following the quake, showed disturbances in the functioning of their conscience as a result of losing part of their moral will-power to do the right thing, and the increased perception that the world is unsafe and unfair.
"While a traumatic event can help children mature faster morally, it also can give them a sense that the rules of society don't apply to their lives," said Dr. Armen Goenjian, primary author of the study. "We found that there can be a divergence between moral understanding and moral functioning."
The findings, published in the April edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, indicate that to prevent impairment of moral functioning in children, treatment following natural calamities should address their moral misconception and negative views of the world.
"The damage caused by a natural disaster can linger far past the point when the bricks and mortar are repaired," said Dr. Robert Pynoos, another study author and director of UCLA's Trauma Psychiatry Program. "These findings suggest that we need to help children in better ways following traumatic events or we run the risk of having a lost generation in many parts of the world."
The study, conducted with physicians from the Armenian Relief Society and Indiana University, is the first to examine the effect of trauma on moral development and conscience functioning among adolescents after a catastrophic natural disaster.
"This is an opportunity to understand moral development and catastrophic events, which have been a part of the human condition for thousands of years," Pynoos said. "We haven't had the tools to study this until recently."
The study involved about 200 Armenian 13- and 16-year-olds, about two-thirds from Spitak, a city near the epicenter of a magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck the country in December 1988. Their experiences were contrasted with a smaller group of children who lived in a second city, the nation's capitol, about 50 miles from the quake's epicenter.
The children from Spitak witnessed massive destruction, with the city being nearly destroyed and about one-third of its residents killed. The nation's capitol experienced mild damage and no significant loss of life.
The children, aided by ongoing relief efforts sponsored by the Armenian Relief Society, took a series of psychological tests about 6 years after the earthquake to measure both their moral development and the effects of earthquake-related psychological trauma.
Doctors found that the adolescents in Spitak displayed a higher level of moral understanding than peers who lived in areas where there was no widespread destruction. For example, the children from Spitak understood the concept that moral options often involve aspects of both good and bad -- considered one sign of higher moral development.
The Spitak children also expressed a higher sense of community and duty, including statements such as "my actions affect my community" and "everyone's rights, needs and feelings must be respected."
Researchers suspect that the accelerated moral development results from the complex situations children faced following the earthquake. Children took on greater responsibilities, such as caring for younger siblings or gathering necessities such as firewood, either because adults were not present or because adults asked them to step into these roles.
But researchers found that the psychological trauma caused by the earthquake may prevent children from putting their moral understanding to use.
The Spitak children were more likely to report feeling they were basically bad, often saying that they no longer had a conscience. Forty percent of the children from Spitak saw the world as a basically evil place and blamed that for losing the will-power to be morally good, compared with 14 percent of the children from the Armenian capitol.
"We know there was a lot of disruption and trauma among the people in Spitak," Goenjian said. "When you have to deviate from the norm just to survive, over time the deviation becomes ingrained in your personality."
"These findings indicate the subtle and complex ways in which traumatic experiences can affect child development and alter life trajectory," said Alan Steinberg, a philosopher who was a member of the research team.
The authors underscore the need to develop new ways to help children cope following traumatic events. Beyond ways to treat their post-traumatic stress, researchers recommend increased efforts to help children establish a better sense of right and wrong.
Other authors of the report are Dr. Barbara Stillwell of Indiana University, and Lynn Fairbanks, Dr. Matthew Galvin and Ida Karayan of the Trauma Psychiatry Program at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
-UCLA-
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