Year: 2001
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Understandings of the longer-term experiences of recovery from road trauma are limited.Many studies to date have examined the psychological and psychiatric consequences of road accidents in the short term, but few have moved to a focus on the psychosocial and subjective aspects of recovery, and the longer-term challenges of this process.This research is based on an ecological understanding of the recovery experience.Such an understanding enables a focus on a range of adaptations -negative, positive and neutral -as well as a range of risk and protective factors.In doing so, it argues that all of the biopsychosocial-spiritual risk and protective factors may interplay to determine the various trauma recovery experiences.In approaching the recovery process in this way, a number of complex, often competing, voices have been brought together to offer new insights into the ways in which survivors of road trauma were experiencing their recovery in the longer-term.79 survivors of road trauma, all of whom received treatment at the Victorian Rehabilitation Centre during 1996/7, completed a mail-out survey.24 of these respondents participated further, by taking part in in-depth, telephone interviews.The survey gathered both quantitative and qualitative data related to their experiences of post-traumatic stress symptoms, post-traumatic growth, social support, and optimism at 3-4 years post-injury.Survivors' perceptions of trauma, of recovery and recovery resources, and of the future were also analyzed using both statistical and qualitative methods.The telephone interviews were used to illuminate and validate these survey findings.There was evidence of many different pathways of recovery.One third of the sample was continuing to experience severe distress, as measured by the Impact of Event Scale (IES), but nearly two thirds of the sample were subjectively reporting ongoing psychological difficulty.99% of the sample reported at least very small degrees of posttraumatic growth.A range of risk and protective factors was examined in relation to these experiences of distress and growth.The most common experiences for the
Author: Louise Harms
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2283264011