Emotional resilience and event centrality mediate posttraumatic growth following adverse childhood experiences

Tranter, Heidi, Brooks, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5469-7769 and Khan, Roxanne (2020) Emotional resilience and event centrality mediate posttraumatic growth following adverse childhood experiences. Psychological Trauma: theory, research, and practice, 13 (2). pp. 165-173. ISSN 1942-9681

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Abstract

Objectives: Research has long established that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can lead to a range of negative psychological consequences, including post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms. It is also increasingly recognized that ACEs can serve as a catalyst for positive changes, such as posttraumatic growth (PTG). The mechanisms by which people report negative or positive changes are less well known. This study explored whether emotional resilience and event centrality could determine the degree of negative or positive changes reported following ACEs. Method: Participants (N = 167; 54.5% female; aged 19-95 years) completed an online survey measuring experiences of childhood adversity, resilience, event centrality, PTS symptoms and PTG. Results: Mediation analyses indicated that resilience and event centrality explained PTG only, exerting significant medium negative and small positive indirect effects on PTG, respectively. Conclusions: These findings indicate that following ACEs, the treatment and management of emotional resilience and event centrality could lead to positive effects on psychological well-being.