Posttraumatic stress and posttraumatic growth and their relationship to coping and self-efficacy in Northwest Australian cyclone communities.

Abstract

The main focus of disaster research conducted to date has been on providing insights into the negative consequences of experiencing a serious threat or adversity. The present study extends this research endeavour by investigating the positive post-trauma resiliency experiences of 512 survey respondents living in four cyclone prone communities in Northwest Australia. The findings reveal that disaster stress is often accompanied by disaster growth and, thus, provides an alternative resilience-based way of viewing postdisaster interventions. Stress and Growth 2Posttraumatic Stress and Posttraumatic Growth and their relationship to coping and selfefficacy in Northwest Australian Cyclone Communities.Resilience is a stress-resistant personal quality that allows individuals to cope, adapt and thrive despite an experience of serious threat or adversity (Ahern et al., 2008). Thus, to some measure the resiliency process of struggling to 'bounce back' from challenge and adversity could be construed as being the very grist of the individual/community lifeexperience mill. However, in exceptional circumstances (e.g., following a natural/human initiated disaster) the ability of an individual/community to grieve, struggle, cope accept and ultimately adapt to a new high stress reality goes well beyond their pre-trauma resiliency norm. Indeed, it is this ability to fulfil post-trauma responsibilities and embrace new tasks and experiences that is considered by some to be the very essence of posttraumatic growth (PTG) (Bonanno, 2007).Three core psychological concepts have been identified within the disaster field of research, namely, stress, coping and self-efficacy, each of which have received varying levels of research attention. Of the three, stress is arguably the most widely researched concept (Ursano et al., 1994). As such, in academia instances of significant psychosocial change (either within the individual or the affected community) are termed stressor events (Van Ameringen et al., 2008). In addition, much research endeavour has been devoted to understanding the human response to post-disaster stressor events within specific age cohorts (e.g., Adult responses see Norris et al., 2008; adolescent responses see Pina et al., 2008; and child responses see Kar, 2009). Consistently, the findings from these studies have suggested that the elderly, adolescents, and children are the most susceptible age groups for developing a high stress response following an experience of an intense stressor (disaster) event (Norris et al., 2008). Stress and Growth 3Other sections of academia have focused on understanding the human stress response to post-disaster stressor events within specific groups of adult workers who were either directly or non-directly involved with the disaster. Somewhat predictably individual workers (e.g., response volunteers [Armstrong et al., 1995]; emergency workers [Wagner, McFee, & Martin, 2009]; nurses and medical workers [Freedy et al., 1992]; emergency managers [Paton & Flin, 1999]) and the general publ...

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“…Posttraumatic growth also appears to be a global phenomenon. In 2012 alone, psychologists have published reports of posttraumatic growth among Turkish university students (Arikan & Karanci, 2012), Chinese earthquake victims (Qian, Yang, Li, Xu, & Wang, 2012), Chinese cancer patients (Tong et al, 2012), tsunami relief volunteers in India (Bhushan & Kumar, 2012), Japanese youth (Taku, Kilmer, Cann, Tedeschi, & Calhoun, 2012) and individuals living in Northwest Australian cyclone-prone communities (Pooley, Cohen, O'Connor, & Taylor, 2012).…”