An Exploratory Analysis of Family Coping Styles and Psychobiological Distress Among Adolescents Affected by a Large-Scale Disaster

The authors examined the relations between mobilizing coping, the tendency for families to respond to problems by seeking community-based assistance, and psychological distress and cortisol activity in homeless adolescents (12–17 years) who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina (n = 50) as compared to demographically matched controls (n = 31). Perceptions of family mobilizing covaried with lower cortisol activity, a physiological indicator of recurrent stress exposure and long-term changes in hypothalamic pituitary adrenal regulation and, in this study, greater internalizing symptoms. Follow-up analyses suggested that mobilizing coping partially mediated the relation between hurricane exposure and lower cortisol. Further research is needed to accurately model biological and psychological consequences of the strategies that families use for dealing with ordinary and extraordinary stressors.