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A social model of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): interpersonal trauma, attachment, group identification, disclosure, social acknowledgement and negative cognitions
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 09:15 authored by Sarah Wodhouse, Rupert Brown, Susan AyersIn response to calls for social models of PTSD (Charuvastra & Cloitre, 2008), we hypothesise relationships between interpersonal/non-interpersonal traumatic events, fearful attachment style, emotional disclosure, group identification, social acknowledgment, posttraumatic cognitions and core trauma symptoms. The utility of social support vs social acknowledgement is also briefly considered. To test this exploratory model, a cross-sectional survey of participants (N = 298) with varying levels of traumatic symptoms following mixed traumas was conducted. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the model. Results support a mediational model, with group identification appearing to mediate the relationship between fearful attachment and social acknowledgement, emotional disclosure appearing to mediate the relationship between interpersonal trauma and social acknowledgment, and posttraumatic cognitions appearing to mediate the relationship between social acknowledgement and core trauma symptoms. Results suggest that, within this exploratory model, social acknowledgment and social support explain a similar amount of variance in traumatic symptoms, but acknowledgment explains considerably more variance in cognitions than social support. The paper successfully applies current theoretical insights on group identification processes to the posttraumatic environment. This theoretical application is relatively novel within the PTSD literature and helps stimulate new theory in this domain. It also provides further evidence of the ‘social cure’ theory. More broadly, the findings highlight the utility of social psychological constructs in helping explain trauma symptoms. We discuss the implications of our findings, the study limitations and suggest avenues for further research.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Journal of Theoretical Social PsychologyISSN
2475-0387Publisher
WileyExternal DOI
Issue
2Volume
2Page range
35-48Department affiliated with
- Psychology Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2017-12-08First Open Access (FOA) Date
2019-02-15First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2017-12-08Usage metrics
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