A multilevel approach to social support as a key determinant of post-traumatic stress disorder onset and trajectories after a mass traumatic event
Item
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Title
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A multilevel approach to social support as a key determinant of post-traumatic stress disorder onset and trajectories after a mass traumatic event
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:812e1446d9e4:11890
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identifier
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12529
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Creator
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Rudenstine, M. Sasha,
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Contributor
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Steve Tuber
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology | Public health | Sociology | Disaster | Distress | Posttraumatic Stress Disorder | Resources | Social Support | Trauma
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Abstract
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Types of social support and the meaning attributed to each type vary across individuals, contexts and time. Widely studied across disciplines is the role of social support during periods of distress. Factors at multiple levels of social support (individual, network, and community) are often important predictors of psychopathology, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in the aftermath of such events. The trajectory of PTSD after traumatic event exposure, in turn, varies markedly between individuals, differing with regards to onset, symptom patterns, recurrence, comorbidity, response to intervention, and recovery.;Recent literature has considered how each of these levels may influence the development and persistence of PTSD. This dissertation is an attempt to bring together substantively overlapping, but disciplinarily siloed discussions related to how individual, network, and community levels of social support contribute to mental health functioning in the aftermath of a population-level disaster. The data demonstrate a clear association between individual (and not network) level social support covariates and PTSD onset as well as resilience/recovery and chronic PTSD. Delayed onset PTSD, on the other hand, was equally associated with network-level variables. Community level variables were excluded from the analyses as they did not show a robust pattern of association with PTSD trajectories in preliminary analyses. Given these findings, it is arguable that the history of defining social support simply as one's actual network or how one perceives of his/her network fails to capture the relational nature of social support as an exchange of resources between two or more unique individuals that can prove beneficial or harmful to the functioning of the recipient. Moreover, this paper argues that individual level social support, which includes individual characteristics and behaviors, is central to the successful exchange of resources (interpersonal and professional) and subsequently to health.;Keywords: social support, posttraumatic stress disorder, resources, distress, disaster, trauma.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
