Impacts of making sense of adversity on depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and posttraumatic growth among a sample of mainly newly diagnosed HIV-positive Chinese young homosexual men: the mediating role of resilience

ABSTRACT

The experience of HIV, as a life-transforming event, might produce both negative and positive outcomes. Guided by the stress appraisal model, the present study investigated the hypothesized pathways in predicting symptomatology and posttraumatic growth (PTG) in a sample of Chinese male patients with HIV (PHIV) who were mainly newly diagnosed, young, and homosexual. In this cross-sectional study, 141 Chinese male PHIV (87.2% of them were homosexual) completed measures of making negative/positive sense of adversity, resilience, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and PTG. The path analysis results showed that making negative sense of adversity was associated with depression and PTSD, partially mediated by low levels of resilience, whereas making positive sense of adversity was associated with PTG, partially mediated by resilience. The results suggest that negative and positive outcomes of trauma are impacted by making negative and positive sense of adversity, respectively, via two separate pathways, both mediated by resilience. Our findings contribute to an understanding of the cognitive process of symptomatology and PTG in the HIV context. Theoretical considerations, clinical implications, and future directions are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Making sense of adversity
• resilience
• depression
• posttraumatic stress disorder
• posttraumatic growth

Acknowledgements

The study was conducted in the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control. We thank health-care staff in the Chaoyang District, Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control for coordination. Appreciation also goes to participants who joined the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

Nancy Xiaonan Yu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6371-2684

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by “The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” [SKZZY2014052] and Strategic Research Grant, City University of Hong Kong. The sponsor had no further role in study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, in the writing of the report, and in the decision to submit the paper for publication.