Sexual Assault Survivors’ Post-Traumatic Growth: Individual and Community-Level Differences

Abstract

Past research has focused on individual differences in post-traumatic growth (PTG) among survivors, but no studies to date have examined differences at the neighborhood level. This exploratory study uses data from a 3-year longitudinal study of women sexual assault survivors ( N = 1,863) living in a segregated city. We tested random intercept models of individuals nested within neighborhoods. Disrupted core beliefs, greater perceived control over recovery, less post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), religious coping, and positive social coping predicted more PTG. White survivors had lower PTG scores than the women of color in this study. Neighborhood-level differences in PTG scores persisted even though violent crime rate and neighborhood poverty did not emerge as significant in our model.

Post-traumatic growth in PhD students during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Though the mechanism behind this pattern is unknown, some have hypothesized that members of minority populations may have developed a greater capacity for positive coping due to marginalization ( Yi et al, 2015 ). While our finding that non-White participants have a higher degree of PTG generally aligns with findings of prior studies ( Kirkner and Ullman, 2020 ; Rzeszutek and Gruszczyńska, 2018 ; Yi et al, 2015 ), it is not possible to draw conclusions about the association between race and PTG in the current study given the modest sample size for each racial group, thereby highlighting the need for further research on this topic. Therefore, these results should be interpreted with caution as the sample sizes for each racial group were small.…”

The impact of sociocultural contexts on mental health following sexual violence: A conceptual model.

“…Among African American survivors of sexual violence, poverty was associated with increased risk of depression, PTSD, and drug use (Bryant-Davis et al, 2009) However, only one study to knowledge has directly examined broader societal economic conditions in relation to survivor well-being. Among a diverse sample of sexual violence survivors, community-level poverty level and crime rate were not significantly associated with posttraumatic growth (Kirkner & Ullman, 2019). More research is needed to understand if these findings also apply to mental health problems following sexual violence.…”

Women's Contexts and Circumstances of Posttraumatic Growth After Sexual Victimization: A Systematic Review

“…The sample sizes of studies ranged from 2 to 39,703 with 19 (48.8%) studies having used qualitative, 19 (46.3%) quantitative, and 3 (7.3%) mixed-methods. The vast majority (63.4%) of studies were conducted in the USA (Cole and Lynn, 2010;Singh et al, 2010;Drauker et al, 2011;Warner Stidham et al, 2012;Williams and Nelson-Gardell, 2012;Wilson et al, 2012;Arias and Johnson, 2013;Davidson et al, 2013;McClain and Frederick Amar, 2013;Foster and Hagedorn, 2014;Ullman, 2014;Bryant-Davis et al, 2015;Kelley and Gidycz, 2015;Simon et al, 2015;Crews et al, 2016;Hartley et al, 2016;Hitter et al, 2017;Kerlin and Sosin, 2017;Smigelsky et al, 2017;Barnett and Maciel, 2019;Catabay et al, 2019;Kirkner and Ullman, 2019;Lahav et al, 2019;Nelson et al, 2019;Saint Arnault and Sinko, 2019;Strauss Swanson and Szymanski, 2020) followed by European studies with 9.8% (Phanichrat and Townshend, 2010;Whitelock et al, 2013;Perez-Gonzalez et al, 2017;Anderson et al, 2019), and two in South Africa (Phasha, 2010;Walker-Williams et al, 2012). One study each was from Australia (Vilencia et al, 2013), Bangladesh (Kaiser and Sinanan, 2020), Brazil (Pessoa et al, 2017), India (George and Bance, 2019), Israel (Kaye-Tzadok and Davidson-Ard, 2016),...…”