LAUSR

Religious and spiritual beliefs serve a number of functions, including promoting mental health in the wake of negative life events. We explore the “meaning as a buffer” hypothesis, which posits that (spiritual) meaning will shield individuals from the negative psychological consequences associated with adversity. Building on Park’s (2010) meaning making model, we investigated whether spiritual meaning can buffer the effect of disaster-related resource loss on posttraumatic stress. Survivors of Hurricane Katrina (N = 485) completed measures of resource loss, spiritual meaning and peace, and posttraumatic stress 3–4 months after the disaster. Survivors who reported experiencing higher spiritual meaning following the disaster reported significantly less severe posttraumatic stress in response to resource loss, relative to survivors who reported lower spiritual meaning and peace. Put differently, spiritual meaning and peace buffered the deleterious effect of disaster-related resource loss on mental health symptoms.