Attachment and Coping as Facilitators of Posttraumatic Growth in Turkish University Students Experiencing Traumatic Events

Abstract

This study was designed to explore the role of attachment and coping as facilitators of posttraumatic growth (PTG) in a sample of Turkish university students who experienced traumatic life events. Participants who reported a traumatic event from a list were asked to choose the most distressing one; to answer questions related to the impact of the trauma; and to fill out measures of attachment styles, ways of coping, and PTG. PTG was regressed on gender, trauma-related factors, attachment styles, and coping styles in order to examine the associations with PTG. Felt helplessness and horror, fatalistic coping, and optimistic coping were significant predictors of PTG. Fatalistic coping partially mediated the relationship between attachment anxiety and PTG.

Keywords:

• posttraumatic growth
• attachment styles
• coping styles

Acknowledgments

This study was conducted in Middle East Technical University and Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey. The authors thank Dr. Anke Karl and Dr. Timothy D. Ritchie for their help in the manuscript preparation.