Citation

Johnsen BH, Eid J, Laberg JC, Thayer JF. Scand. J. Psychol. 2002; 43(2): 181-188.

Affiliation

Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Norway. bjoern.johnsen@psych.uib.no

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, Scandinavian Psychological Associations, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

12004957

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of multiple trauma exposure and coping style on post-traumatic stress symptoms and quality of life. It was hypothesized that sensitization would occur in subjects repeatedly exposed to life-threatening situations (study 1), and different coping styles would act as a resilience or facilitating factor in symptom development (study 2). The results showed that the single-exposure group revealed a decrease in trauma specific stress reactions from three weeks to four months, with a persistent reduction at 12-month follow-up, while the repeated-exposure group showed an increase in symptom reporting over the 12-month period. The same pattern emerged for perceived quality of life-measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-30). The second study revealed a correlation between scores on avoidant-focused coping style and the Impact of Event Scale-avoidance dimension, Post-traumatic Symptom Scale and GHQ-30. Furthermore, only subjects with a dominant coping style of emotion-focused or task-focused coping showed a reduction in trauma-specific symptom scores over time.

Language: en