Resilience and post-trauma growth

Research in recent years has begun to examine why some are able to remain resilient in the aftermath of psychological trauma—and why some seem to emerge healthier than before—rather than focusing only on the negative psychological effects of trauma.

In the Washington Post, Michael E. Ruane reports:

Although the shattering psychological impact of war is well known, experts have become increasingly interested in those who emerge from combat feeling enhanced. Some psychiatrists and psychologists believe that those soldiers have experienced a phenomenon known as "post-traumatic growth," or "adversarial" growth.

Ruane spoke with National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder director Matthew J. Friedman (a member of the Dart Center advisory council), who cited fragmentary evidence of a growth phenomenon but said (in Ruane's paraphrase) that "research on the issue has not been that extensive."

Ruane also spoke with University of North Carolina psychologists Lawrence G. Calhoun and Richard G. Tedeschi, both leading proponents of the post-traumatic growth theory. Ruane writes:

Both men stressed that growth is not necessarily a goal, nor is trauma "good." Calhoun said: "Post-traumatic growth occurs in the context of . . . suffering. We hope everybody who goes to Iraq comes back safe and sound and doesn't have any traumas to grow from."

The increasing attention being given to post-traumatic growth and resilience is reflective, Ruane writes, of recent research showing that "most people exposed to combat and other traumatic events do not develop chronic mental health problems."

"It used to be thought that virtually everybody who experienced these kinds of catastrophic events would go on to develop" PTSD symptoms, said Lt. Col. Charles C. Engel Jr., a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. "That was kind of a post-Vietnam War assumption. What we've learned over time is that probably, on average, really about two-thirds to three-fourths don't develop PTSD."

Of course, a corollary of Engel's statement is that one-quarter to one-third of people who experience these kinds of events do develop PTSD.