Resilience factors in PTSD

Abstract

Only a relatively small percentage of the people exposed to traumatic events develop PTSD. While much research has focused on the etiology of the disorder and on risk factors, possible resilience factors in post-traumatic adjustment have been studied considerably less extensively. The field of psychology provides several constructs and theoretical paradigms that may aid in the understanding of resilience. Hardiness, dispositional optimism, locus of control, social support and coping for instance, are all concepts that may readily be applied to the study of buffering or resilience factors in PTSD. To establish how these factors relate to post traumatic stress symptoms multiple regression analyses were performed on test files of 126 Dutch veterans and soldiers. Preliminary results show that neither hardiness nor optimism significantly predicted number and intensity of PTSD symptoms. Levels of social support explained a significant proportion of variance in symptoms as did locus of control. Higher levels of avoidant and emotional coping strategies predicted PTSD symptoms. These results show that coping strategies and resources are important resilience factors. Further analyses, to be performed on a larger data set, will be presented.