The Impact of Coping Self-Efficacy and Event Centrality on PTSD Symptom Severity and Posttraumatic Growth Among Survivors of IPV
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Date
2018-01-01
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Department
Psychology
Program
Psychology
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Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan thorugh a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Abstract
Research indicates that event centrality has a unique ability to positively predict posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and posttraumatic growth (PTG), concepts that are intuitively opposite. The present study aimed to evaluate whether coping self-efficacy can help explain the distinct associations with growth and distress among a sample of intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors. The following moderations were hypothesized 1) the relation between PTSD and event centrality will be stronger among individuals with low coping self-efficacy, 2) the relation between event centrality and PTG will be weaker among individuals with low coping self-efficacy, and 3) the moderating effect of coping self-efficacy on event centrality and PTG will be stronger among individuals with higher PTSD symptom severity. Forty-six survivors of IPV were recruited and provided data on the study variables. Results indicated that coping self-efficacy was negatively associated with event centrality and PTSD, and positively associated with PTG. PTG was not associated with event centrality, PTSD, or IPV exposure. Additionally, emotional abuse frequency was most strongly associated with PTSD compared to all other forms of IPV exposure. None of the hypothesized moderations were significant. Further results indicated that coping self-efficacy and event centrality account for 73.5% of the variance in PTSD symptoms and 16% of the variance in PTG. These results suggest that event centrality is a strong predictor of PTSD symptom severity; however, they contrast with previous studies that have shown that higher event centrality predicts higher levels of both PTSD and PTG. Instead, the results suggest that coping self-efficacy is a key predictor that may be central to the development of both PTSD and PTG.