Post-traumatic narratives in the 2010 post-earthquake context in Haiti

Objectives.- This research aims to explore post-traumatic narratives of adolescents and young adult survivors of the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, more than six years later. It aims to explore long-term consequences of this traumatic event among survivors and analyze their strategies to overcome them. We focus on the survivors subjective understanding of the traumatic experience, taking into account their cultural values and representations, the struggles they face and their coping strategy. Methods.- Two clinical cases from the qualitative phase (N = 8) of our work are presented and analyzed. The data were collected in Haiti during June and July 2016, more than 6 years after the earthquake. Based on semi-structured clinical interviews and from a phenomenological perspective we constructed clinical data in the form of life-stories of the survivors with a focus on narrative processes. Results.- The results show a high level of vulnerability among adolescents and young adult survivors of the earthquake more than six years after. We noticed a several psychological vulnerability factors related to the traumatic event among the survivors such as political unrest and precarious living conditions. Moreover, the analysis of their post-traumatic narratives denotes their ability to find resources to overcome the trauma and recover despite of significant symptoms of PTSD. The results of the quantitative phase that we are not developing in this article showed, for sample of 723 adolescents and young adult survivors, 35.82% of significant symptoms of PTSD, with a higher prevalence for girls and young women. Conclusions.- The analysis of the clinical cases, specially the exploration of the clinical interviews, allowed us to distinguish four categories of cross-sectional analysis for all clinical cases: psychological disturbances; God as a support for making sense of the event; identity rearrangements; and multifactorial resilience with a predominance of school resilience. The results may prove useful for setting up mental health programmes and devising tools appropriate for the youth population in Haiti. (C) 2019 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.