International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Abstract

The goals of this study were to examine the development of Affective and behavioral changes following exposure to traumatic events amongst Israeli students studying under a high level of terror event exposure and to assess the effects of religiosity on those changes development. A questionnaire was administered to 770 students in the Ariel University. Higher levels of terror exposure were associated with higher levels of avoidance behavior, subjective feelings of insecurity, and emotional distress. Higher religiosity moderated avoidance behavior, even when controlling for the level of objective exposure to terror events exposure, but had no influence on subjective sense of insecurity, or the level of emotional distress. These findings suggest that religiosity moderates behavioral changes development after traumatic event exposure mainly by reducing avoidance behavior.

Biography

Liat Korn is a senior researcher and lecturer in the field of Medical Sociology. Her doctoral thesis (2005) was on �??Water Pipe Smoking among Teen-agers in Israel: A sociological Analysis�?� from Bar-Ilan University, Israel. In her post-doc she studied and conducted the Israeli HBSC (Health Behavior of School-aged Children) and HBSC-ME (HBSC in the Middle East). She published more than 20 papers in reputed journals and conducted several studies including risk behaviors among teenagers and young adults in Israel. She offers courses and seminars in Sociology; Medical Sociology, Epidemiology, Health Promotion and Risk Behavior.