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Reactions to Repeated Unpredictable Terror Attacks: Relationships Among Exposure, Posttraumatic Distress, Mood, and Intensity of Coping 1
Author(s) -
Somer Eli,
Ruvio Ayalla,
Sever Ilana,
Soref Erez
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2007.00190.x
Subject(s) - distress , coping (psychology) , psychology , mood , negative mood , posttraumatic stress , clinical psychology , terrorism , psychological distress , psychiatry , mental health , archaeology , history
We hypothesized that exposure to Type IV trauma (involving alteration in a person's basic relation to the environment), associated with prolonged terrorist threats, would impact posttraumatic distress and that exposure to terrorism would impact the intensity of coping. The relationships revealed by the data proved to be in line with this model. Our data suggested that the relationship of exposure and coping was not direct, but seemed to be mediated by posttraumatic distress, that demoralization at the height of an unrelenting terror campaign was unrelated to trauma exposure, and that acceptance was a distinct way of coping adopted by targeted Israelis. Acceptance showed the weakest association with posttraumatic distress and was related inversely to our index of low morale.