Relationship between trauma, post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth for police officials: A path analysis

• Published in: Pakistan journal of medical sciences 2024-10, Vol.40 (10), p.2223-2227
• Main Authors: Azeem, Azra, Rauf, Nelofar Kiran
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1682-024X; 1681-715X
• DOI: 10.12669/pjms.40.10.8897

Background & Objective: Police officials tend to face a high frequency of potentially traumatic incidents due to nature of their job. A dichotomous distinction among these traumatic incidents is witnessing of threat or harm to others and the experiencing of threat or harm directly to oneself. Previous research suggests that different types of traumas (direct and indirect) exposure can produce different levels of negative responses including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and positive outcomes such as posttraumatic growth (PTG) in police officials and other law enforcement agencies officials. Our objective was to study post-traumatic stress 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. Moreover, the results from the present study also revealed the possibility of positive changes in behaviors facilitated by moderate exposure of trauma and stress. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.40.10.8897 How to cite this: Azeem A, Kiran N. Relationship between trauma, post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth for police officials: A path analysis. Pak J Med Sci.