Correlation between mental health and personality among high school students after earthquake

Objective To explore the correlation between mental health and personality among high school students five months after Wenchuan earthquake.Methods General condition questionnaire,Symptom Checklist 90(SCL-90),and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire(EPQ)(adult edition) were used to assess mental health status and personality of 475 high school students.Results The positive rate of total SCL-90 score was 56.15%(265/475) wtih the positive rates of 50.3% for depression and 41.3% for anxiety.The positive rates were higher than those of Chinese norm(P0.05,P0.01).The scores of schoolgirls were higher than that of the schoolboys.There was a significant correlation between the score of EPQ items(N,P,L) and the score of SCL-90.Conclusion The level of mental health of high school students in disaster area is low.The result of personality test suggests that students with character of introversion and instable emotion are prone to show psychological problems.