In a week (Thursday 15th) the next #traumaresearch Paper Discussion on Twitter will take place. You are very welcome to join this international exchange of ideas on recent studies, either as an ‘observer’ or as an active participant. This edition’s topic will be Posttraumatic Growth, more specifically the systematic review by Myerson and colleagues (2011).
Later this week I’ll post a few reflections on the topic but for now I’ll give you the abstract of the paper as a warming-up exercise :-).
“Stress and trauma research has traditionally focused on negative sequelae of adversity. Recently, research has begun to focus on positive outcomes, specifically posttraumatic growth (PTG) – ‘positive change experienced as a result of the struggle with trauma’ – which emphasizes the transformative potential of one’s experiences with highly stressful events and circumstances. The positive changes of PTG are generally thought to occur in five domains: new possibilities, relating to others, personal strength, appreciation of life, and spiritual change.
The study of PTG has, for the most part, been centered on adults, and not until very recently has there been sufficient research on PTG among children and adolescents to justify a review. The current systematic review of the literature on PTG among children and adolescents included 25 studies that tested associations between PTG and conceptually-relevant variables found to be associated with PTG in adults and hypothesized to play similar roles in young people, including environmental characteristics, distress responses, social processes, psychological processes, positive outcomes, and demographic variables. Links were made between a theoretical model of PTG among youth and findings of the current review. Limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed. “
The live #traumaresearch chat will start at 9am GMT, Thursday 15th of March (which corresponds to 10am in Amsterdam, 8pm in Melbourne, and 4am (sorry!) in New York).
If you would like to get people think about particular aspects of / issues with posttraumatic growth ahead of the chat, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll include them in the next post.
If you’re new to Twitter, you’ll find all the basics to get started and join the chat in this “Twitter for Academics” video (let me know if you have any questions).
What are your thoughts on posttraumatic growth? How can we study it? Which studies do you particularly like? How about clinical implications? Any thoughts to get us reflecting on the topic before the chat takes place are welcome!
Trauma Recovery Lab 
I think an increase in self-efficacy is a good way of operationalising PTG. When an individual emerges from a trauma and reflects that they are managing to cope against the odds self-efficacy is increased and from then on they are likely to suffer from less psychopathology.