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Survivors of trauma often experience tremendous growth in the aftermath, a hopeful concept for those in crisis, and now psychologists like Dr. Richard Tedeschi, currently Professor of Psychology and Coordinator of the Clinical/Community Psychology Graduate Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, are deeply enmeshed in the study this phenomenon. At UNC Charlotte he conducts research on trauma and posttraumatic growth, teaches personality psychology and psychotherapy, and supervises graduate practica. He has published, together with his colleague, Lawrence Calhoun, several books on trauma, bereavement and posttraumatic growth including the most recent volume entitled Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006).
1. You have looked at the phenomenon of Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) in a wide variety of individuals and communities who have suffered a trauma. When you heard about the earthquake in Haiti, what were your first thoughts?
Researchers around the world have looked at PTG in a variety of circumstances, including earthquakes (e.g. Some work that was done in Turkey and is going on in China now). My first thoughts about Haiti were probably the same as most people's thoughts, and had nothing to do with PTG.
2. You have used the image of an earthquake as a metaphor for PTG, to communicate, in a sense, that it is not the quake itself that produces growth, but that the process in the aftermath can, as people distinguish between what is sturdy and what has been disabled, and as they rebuild a new set of stronger, more sustainable structures. We are in a global moment of attending to the aftermath of an earthquake in Haiti---is this also a teachable moment for Post Traumatic Growth?
I don't think this is a teachable moment for PTG. Those moments come later, when people have time to reflect on their losses and changes.
3. In most of the mainstream media coverage of the earthquake, we don't tend to hear about the growth that occurs in the aftermath of trauma. Have there
been PTG studies of other communities hit by earthquakes? What do they reveal?
One of the things that seems to be consistent is that people who go to work helping others experience more PTG.
4. Many or even most Haitian people had endured a trauma before the earthquake hit. How does previous experience with trauma impact PTG?
If they have experienced PTG before in the aftermath of other trauma, they
probably will experience less PTG in succeeding traumas.
5. If you had to advise journalists about telling PTG stories of the earthquake survivors, what guidelines would you give them?
Don't paint a picture that PTG somehow makes loss less difficult, though it may be more meaningful. The world isn't divided into people who report PTG and those who don't. Consider timing, and the mixture of loss and gain in the aftermath of trauma.
6. As witnesses to this trauma, if we should meet someone who has survived this earthquake in our own community, are there more helpful ways to listen
and to communicate with them to support them and encourage growth?
Certainly--be an "expert companion", as we have termed it--a person who is a listener first and foremost, without feeling compelled to give advice, and who can support the idiosyncratic ways people cope with their losses.
