Reactions to a traumatic event: The good, the bad and the ugly?

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Abstract
In developing an aetiological model of the human response to trauma, most research is focused on the negative consequences. Amid this, there has been research which reports people perceiving benefits from their trauma experience. This paper reports the use of the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory with people who have been admitted to hospital following an accident or an assault. This new instrument is intended to assess positive life changes in people who have experienced any type of trauma. Reliability data from this sample are compared with the reliability reported by the instruments' authors for an undergraduate sample. Results also showed an association with the Impact of Event Scale. This finding is discussed in terms of how a positive response might inform our understanding of the human processing of trauma.