Posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress – a network analysis among Syrian and Iraqi refugees

Figures & data

Table 1. Demographic details of the sample of Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

	n	%
Gender
Male	1678	53.1
Female	1417	44.9
NA	64	2.0
Age group
18–24	1153	36.5
25–34	877	27.8
35–44	480	15.2
45–54	308	9.7
55–74	219	6.9
75 or older	22	0.7
NA	100	3.2
Home country
Syria	1575	49.9
Iraq	1460	46.2
NA	124	3.9
Education
No formal education	106	3.4
<6 years of education	141	4.5
6 years of schooling	319	10.1
9 years of schooling	618	19.6
12 years of schooling	739	23.4
>12 years of schooling	1156	36.6
NA	80	2.5
Potentially traumatic experiences
Lack of food or water	1424	45.1
Ill health without medical care	1086	34.4
Lack of shelter	1090	34.5
Imprisonment	621	19.7
Physical abuse	686	21.7
Serious injury	460	14.6
Combat situation	910	28.8
Indiscriminate shelling or bombing	2148	68.0
Being close to death	1042	33.0
Forced evacuation	1341	42.5
Forced separation from family	889	28.1
Murder of family or friend	979	31.0
Unnatural death of family or friend	735	23.3
Murder of stranger	715	22.6
Kidnapped	366	11.6
Tortured	435	13.8

Note: N = 3159.

Table 2. Means and standard deviations for different aspects of posttraumatic growth and different types of posttraumatic stress symptoms for refugees from Syria and Iraq.

	M	SD	Abbreviation
Aspects of posttraumatic growth
1 – Changed Priorities about What Is Important	3.06	1.37	ChangedPriorities
2 – Greater Appreciation for Value of Life	3.29	1.24	AppreciateLife
3 – Able to Do Better Things	3.32	1.22	AbleDoBetterThings
4 – Better Understanding of Spiritual Matters	2.98	1.42	BetterSpiritual
5 – Greater Sense of Closeness with Others	3.23	1.19	Closeness
6 – Established New Path for Life	3.19	1.29	NewPath
7 – Know Better I Can Handle Difficulties	3.32	1.16	BetterHandle
8 – Stronger Religious Faith	3.55	1.31	StrongerFaith
9 – Discovered I'm Stronger than I Thought	3.35	1.24	DiscStronger
10 – Learned How Wonderful People Are	2.98	1.32	WonderfulPeople
Total	32.32	8.65
Posttraumatic stress symptoms
1 – Intrusions	3.20	1.12	Intrusions
2 – Reactivity	3.06	1.16	Reactivity
3 – Avoidance	2.76	1.28	Avoidance
4 – Distance from Other People	2.73	1.35	Distance
5 – Irritability	2.76	1.22	Irritability
6 – Difficulties Concentrating	2.65	1.32	DiffConc
Total	17.17	5.93

Note: N = 3159. Posttraumatic growth measured with the PTGI-SF on a scale of 0–5 and posttraumatic stress symptoms on the 6-item PCL-C on a scale of 1–5.

Figure 1. Relationship between posttraumatic stress symptoms and posttraumatic growth among Syrian and Iraqi refugees residing in Turkey. Best fitting linear and quadratic relationship presented in blue and red, respectively. Position of individual data points jittered for easier interpretation.

Figure 2. Gaussian graphical models of (a) aspects of posttraumatic growth and (b) aspects of posttraumatic growth (presented in blue) and types of posttraumatic stress symptoms (presented in red), for Syrian and Iraqi refugees residing in Turkey. Edge thickness represents degree of association as partial correlations, green edges indicate positive association, and red edges indicate negative association. Model selection estimation used for estimating the network and the spring algorithm used for layout determination.

Figure 3. Node/bridge strength (green) and node/bridge 1-step expected influence (yellow) as measures of node/bridge centrality for (a) network of aspects of posttraumatic growth and (b) network of aspects of posttraumatic growth (presented in blue) and types of posttraumatic stress symptoms (presented in red), for Syrian and Iraqi refugees residing in Turkey. Scaled values presented.

Data availability statement

Data used in this research are available from the third author upon request. As permission to share data publicly was not requested from participants and the data includes potentially sensitive information, the data cannot be made fully publicly available. All scripts used to carry out data manipulation and statistical analyses are provided in the Supplementary Material.