Associations of Sense of Self, Resilience and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms among Burn Patients.
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Wang, Shao-Ying
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
The main purpose of the present empirical study was to investigate the associations of sense of self, resilience and posttraumatic stress symptoms in burn patients in Taiwan. There were 33 burn patients from Kaoshiung Tsuo-Ying hospital participated in this study. All According to the literature review, there were no direct association between the degree of severity rated by surgeons and postburn psychological problems. This study reexamined this issue and resulted similarly. The basic assumptive theory, proposed by Janoff-Bulman (1985, 1992, 2006), is about cognitive representation of valuations that organize the self as well as the value of sense of connection and belonging. While the trauma has shattered the assumptions, collapse and breaking-down in self severs as the consequence of damage in the assumptive world. PTSD is then seen as maladjusted response after violation of the assumptions. Some previous studies had shown that the basic assumptions were impacted by the trauma, and also positively correlated to psychological symptoms. However, the measures used in previous studies were inconsistent. This study used indigenous measure of Sense of Self Scale. The results showed that the scores of pre/post burn trauma were significantly different, positively related to posttraumatic stress symptoms, and able to predict the posttraumatic stress symptoms. Based on the positive psychology, resilience is not only defined as personal characteristic but also dynamic process which leads to positive adjustment to adversity. Due to the inconsistency of definition about adversity and adjustment to single or multiple negative events in previous studies, this study adopted the Resilience Scale for Adults developed by Dr. Friborg（Friborg, Hjemdal, Rosenvinge, Martinussen, Aslaksen, & Flaten, 2006） to measure resilience. The results showed that there were no significant differences between pre- and post-burn resilience; the score of postburn resilience were negatively related to posttraumatic stress symptoms. Results of both sense of self and resilience generally met the hypotheses and were consistent with previous theoretical inference. Nevertheless, it is inconsistent with of the hypotheses about resilience that the total change score between pre- and post-burn Resilience Scale were not able to predict posttraumatic stress symptoms. In addition, preburn resilience was not able to predict posttraumatic stress symptoms. These results may be because of the diversities of the characteristics of the participants, or the characteristic of resilience may indeed emerge to manifest itself after the traumatic event. Finally, the contributions, limitations, and clinical applications of the present study were addressed in the last chapter. Some possibilities to carry on further researches were also provided.
Keywords: sense of self, the basic assumption theory, resilience, posttraumatic symptoms, burn injury.
Subjects
自我感
基本假定理論
復原力
創傷後心理症狀
燒燙傷
sense of self
the basic assumption theory
resilience
posttraumatic symptoms
burn injury
Type
other