The Mental Health of Older Buddhists After the Wenchuan Earthquake

This study investigated changes in measures of mental health among elderly Buddhists after the Wenchuan earthquake in China. The mental health status of Buddhists was compared with that of a non-religious group matched for age which was also severely affected by the disaster. The study focused on two geographic areas which were badly damaged by the earthquake, Beichuan and Mianyang, with Beichuan having suffered the greater damage. The Mental Health Inventory for the Elderly (MHIE) was used to measure the cognitive efficiency, emotional state, self-perception, interpersonal communication, and adaptive ability of survivors at two different times and in two different places: in Beichuan at 4 months and 10 months after the earthquake, and in Mianyang at 6 months and 10 months after the disaster. The scores on the Mental Health Inventory for the older Buddhists in Beichuan were significantly lower than those for the non-religious participants there, but no significant differences were found in Mianyang. The mental health scores of older Buddhists in Beichuan 10 months after the earthquake were significantly better than those recorded 4 months after the earthquake. There were no significant differences in the mental health measurements of Buddhists between testing times in Mianyang. The results indicated that religious faith helped Buddhists recover from trauma, but only in areas severely damaged by earthquakes. The lower level of mental health scores was interpreted to mean that those with religious sensitivities were more deeply affected by but had resilience facing the trauma of the earthquake.