A Path Analysis of Relationship between War Trauma, Post - Traumatic Stress and Post Traumatic Growth.

Abstract

Background & objective: Police officials who participated in war on terror were exposed to high frequency of traumatic exposures. Previous research suggests that exposure of war trauma can results in negative changes like stress and positive changes like growth. Our objective was to study the role of post-traumatic stress in relationship between war trauma and post traumatic growth among police officials.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study conducted from January 2019 to December 2022. The sample consisted of 400 police officials (having direct and indirect exposure of war trauma) who participated in war on terror in FATA Pakistan. Non probability purposive sampling technique was used for sample selection. Relationship among trauma, PTS (Post traumatic stress) and PTG (Post traumatic growth) was assessed.

Results: Findings from the present study indicated that stress played vital role in paving pathway from trauma to growth (β =0.08). Study results also confirmed that moderate level of stress is linked with positive changes like posttraumatic growth. R-square change in linear relationship among stress and posttraumatic growth was 0.59 but in curvilinear relationship among stress and posttraumatic growth R-square change was 0.77 which is higher than linear relationship which confirmed the curvilinear relationship between stress and growth and these findings proved that moderate level of stress after war trauma exposure produced higher levels of post traumatic growth. Conditional indirect effect of exposure to trauma on growth is highly significant (***p < .001) so the role of stress as mediator has been confirmed.

Conclusion: The study provided initial evidence that after trauma exposure levels of posttraumatic stress which is experienced play a significant role in the promotion of PTG.