The Relationship of Trauma Exposure and Posttraumatic Stress with Posttraumatic Growth:Linear or Curvilinear

Regular exposure to conflicts does have negative repercussions but people do adapt and report posttraumatic growth to mitigate their impact. Post traumatic growth is a challenging area and requires attention especially in conflict prone areas. This cross-sectional study comprised of 797 Kashmiri young adults between 18 years to 24 years of age who have been exposed to stressful life experiences regarding prolonged armed-conflict in Kashmir. The study explored the association of PTG with PTSD and trauma exposure, and whether the relationship of PTG with Trauma Exposure and PTSD symptoms were linear or curvilinear. Exposure to Kashmir Conflict Checklist, Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) and PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C) were used to assess trauma exposure, posttraumatic growth and PTSD symptomology respectively. The results found a curvilinear relationship between trauma exposure and PTG (β=-.39), whereas linear relationship was found between PTSD and PTG ((β=-.17) with high PTSD scores associated with higher PTG scores. Older age was also associated with PTG (β=.10). The study found that both growth and negative symptoms can co-occur simultaneously. So, it becomes necessary to address both positive and negative symptoms when assessing and treating the traumatized population exposed to conflict like situation.