Impact of disaster exposure severity: Cascading effects across parental distress, adolescent PTSD symptoms, as well as parent-child conflict and communication.

Rationale: Natural disasters are common and have potentially deleterious impacts on individuals, as well as on the relationships among family members (Adams et al., 2015; Paul, 2015). Additionally, caregiver-, offspring-, and family-level outcomes are often correlated following disaster.

Genetic and psychosocial predictors of alcohol use trajectories among disaster-exposed adolescents.

Background And Objectives: Adolescent alcohol misuse is associated with numerous long-term adverse outcomes, so we examined predictors of alcohol use among disaster-exposed adolescents, a group at-risk for alcohol misuse.

Methods: The current study (n = 332) examined severity of tornado-related exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, emotional support, and a genetic risk sum score (GRSS) as predictors of alcohol use trajectories.

Results: Severity of exposure interacted with the GRSS to predict both intercept (12-month follow up quantity of alcohol use) and growth rate.