Oral Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Understanding Posttraumatic Growth: Similarities And Differences In The Prevalence And Predictors Of Posttraumatic Growth Between Natural Disasters Victims And Man-Made Disasters Victims In Peru (#218)

Pamela Nunez del Prado Chaves 1
  1. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Miraflores, LIMA, Peru

With both disasters and the number of their victims increasing, disasters constitute a major public health problem; as they can turn into traumatic events that threaten the physical and psychological integrity of those who experience them producing post-traumatic stress symptoms(PTSS;Cohen & Werker, 2008). In developing countries major catastrophes also lead to a slowdown or even a complete halt in their economic growth, since the funds instead of being spent on projects for medium- or long-term development have to be diverted to rehabilitation and reconstruction of the devasted area. For that reason, is important to understand possible personal resources that can alleviate and/or generate growth individually and collectively such as Posttraumatic Growth PTG (Cann, Tedeschi, & Calhoun, 2008). Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the similarities and differences in Posttraumatic growth, its prevalence and predictors in victims of El Niño-Phenomenon (mudslides) and victims of drain floods (man-made) occurred on January 2019. Method: A stratification random sampling strategy was adopted, and 13 participants were surveyed one month after both kind of disasters occurred.The participants completed a set of questionnaires, including the PTGI(Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996), the PCL-5(Gargurevich,2015),  the SBPQ(Waters,2015). Confirmatory Factor analysis, ANOVA, Hierarchical Regression. Results: It was found that the stress levels were significant higher for the man-made disaster victims. On the other hand, Posttraumatic Stress and SBP had a positive and significant effect on posttraumatic growth in both samples. Finally, it was found that stress had curvilinear relationship with PTG in people with low SBP, while in case of high SBP it had a linear relationship.