The relationship between awareness of being supported and meaning making and posttraumatic growth in past stress experience

Abstract

The present study investigated the relationships among perceived social support for one’s most life-changing stress event, one’s meaning making for it, posttraumatic growth, and the stress reaction. The survey was conducted on 295 undergraduate students; 158 students who had suffered their life-changing stress event and gave effective responses were analyzed(71 males and 86 females, mean age:19.7). Path analysis showed that the scores for perceived social support related positively to posttraumatic growth mediated by meaning making. Simple linear regression analyses indicated that ‘meaning making’ have a week buffering effect toward ‘depression and evasion of others’, but there aren’t any remarkable influences toward other factors of stress reaction. These findings suggest that perceived social support at the point of the life-changing stress event does not necessarily buffer the various stress reactions but helps the process of meaning making, and eventually, posttraumatic growth.