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Posttraumatic growth after war: A study with former refugees and displaced people in Sarajevo
Author(s) -
Powell Steve,
Rosner Rita,
Butollo Willi,
Tedeschi Richard G.,
Calhoun Lawrence G.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/jclp.10117
Subject(s) - refugee , psychology , displaced person , criminology , internally displaced person , syrian refugees , political science , law
Research carried out with survivors of a variety of different traumata indicates that a large proportion of them perceive positive changes in themselves after the trauma. This study investigated whether posttraumatic growth also could be found among people who had been exposed to particularly severe traumata over a period of several years (1991 to 1995) during the war in the area of the former Yugoslavia. Included in the study were two representative samples of adult former refugees and displaced people who lived anywhere in former Yugoslavia before the war and were currently living in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, three and a half years after the war. The main instrument was a new Bosnian translation of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Results indicated some differences in the factor structure as compared with the original instrument. The overall means for the scale were considerably lower than reported in most studieson other kinds of trauma. Younger people reported considerably more growth than older people. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 59: 71–83, 2003.