Tag Archives: posttraumatic growth

Posttraumatic growth: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?

Posted on by
Reply

This Thursday the live #traumaresearch chat on Twitter (10am Amsterdam; 8pm Melbourne) will be about posttraumatic growth. We’ll discuss the recent literature review by Meyerson et al.

Feel free to join us for the full hour or part of it, as an active participant or just by reading the comments. If you would like to participate but have no Twitter experience yet: have a look at this Twitter for Trauma Researchers video, it will explain you how to get started.

What is posttraumatic growth? In short, it is “Positive change experienced as a result of the struggle with trauma”. Or, in non-academic terms, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” (Nietsche). Examples are feeling more connected to friends and family, having a clearer view of life priorities, or simply enjoying ‘the little things’ more.

As with many things in trauma research, there is quite an amount of work done with adults but far less knowledge on the experience of children and adolescents. Meyerson and colleagues summarize the findings of all articles and dissertations they could identify: 25 studies. Continue reading →

Next #traumaresearch chat: Posttraumatic Growth

Posted on by
1

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. Continue reading →